REMINISCENCES 



OF 



REV. WM. ELLERY CHANNING, D.D. 



BY 

ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY. 



Heu, quanto minus est cum caeteris versari 
Quam meminisse te ! 



BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1880. 



By Transftr 

»»«* 26 1917 



Copyright, 1877, 
By Elizabeth P. Peabody. 



University Press : 
John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



PREFACE. 



1\ VTY simple object in these Keminiscences has been 
to make a clean script of the impression Dr. 
Channing made on my mind in the years between 
1816 and 1842; for ho seemed to me a fixed centre, 
around which was much revolution of thought in 
Massachusetts. Of course, the image suffers from 
the inadequate mirror whose inequalities of surface 
distort it more or less. But whatever may seem 
not self-consistent must be referred to my want of 
comprehension. If I have succeeded in bringing the 
living, breathing, suffering, and rejoicing man whom 
I knew to the common heart, so that my readers 
shall go to his own printed pages with minds awak- 
ened to the practical meaning with which every sen- 
tence is loaded, I shall be satisfied. I have hoped 
to do so by opening the door to his private every- 
day life, and by giving some idea of his weekly 
sermons. The diamond finish of what he elaborated 
for the press leaves the mind of the reader, perhaps, 
comparatively idle in an aesthetic delight, instead of 
suggesting trains of thought to be carried out by his 
own efforts. 



iv 



PREFACE. 



It has annoyed me to hear so much, lately, of Dr. 
Channing's being " out grown " by younger thinkers, 
whose cursory reading of his Works, without any 
knowledge of his individuality, has prevented them 
from seeing that he had "a thought beyond other 
men's thought/' as was well said of him in his life- 
time by one of his most intimate friends. 

Just as I was closing my last chapter, there came 
to my hand the book entitled " Swedenborg and Chan- 
ning," published, as it seems, two years ago by Mr. 
B. F. Barrett, of Germantown, Penn. I have read it 
through with great delight. It consists of parallel pas- 
sages from Swedenborg's and Dr. Channing's Works, 
on sixty-seven most important points of Theology, 
Pneumatology, and Christology, in which the identity 
of the thought amounts to proof of their profound 
verity ; since it is well known to many — and I know 
certainly — that Dr. Channing was never a reader of 
Swedenborg at all, and that he had a method of arriv- 
ing at truth entirely different from that which Swed- 
enborg professes. The passages quoted seem to me 
the very best to be found in the Works of either of 
these great seers, and are calculated to make the 
readers of each go with great interest to the pages 
of the other. I would earnestly recommend every 
one interested in Dr. Channing to read it. To those 
who literally believe that Swedenborg had personal 
communication with the angels, or with departed 
spirits who inhabit other mansions of the Father s 
house than this material body, it will be of course 



PREFACE. 



V 



Divine endorsement of Dr. Channing's views. There 
might have been other parallel passages, had the 
sermon of Dr. Channing been published to which I 
refer on page 300. 

But there is one subject on which Dr. Channing 
had a thought beyond Swedenborg's revelations. Pro- 
foundly as he felt the solemn reality of future retri- 
bution, he did not believe in any creature being 
everlastingly punished ; because he believed no evil 
or sin of a finite will could hold out forever against 
the grace of infinite love. I have heard him say this, 
a great many times. 

E. P. P. 

Concord, Mass., March, 1880. 




REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



CHAPTER I. 

ECKEBMAlsnST, in the beginning of his " Reminis- 
cences of Goethe, " confesses his inadequacy to 
give a complete image of the great original;, but, feel- 
ing that his relations with him were sincere, " I dare," 
he says, " to give the world my Goethe and inti- 
mates that it is only by many such attempts of lesser 
men that ever a great man can be represented. So 
we get Socrates from the differing portraitures of 
Plato and Xenophon, and Christ Jesus from the 
several Evangelists, each speaking from a different 
stand-point. 1 

With a like diffidence to Eckermann's, would I 
offer my Channing, whom I had some peculiar oppor- 
tunities for knowing during the last twenty years of 
his life, and whom I think none of his contempora- 
ries or immediate successors have fully represented ; 
though the " Memoir," etc., by his nephew William 
Henry Channing, was conceived on an excellent plan, 
executed with consummate fidelity, and, if it were 
properly studied by those who undertake to speak of 

1 See F. D. Maurice's Unity of the New Testament. 
1 



2 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANN1NG. 



Dr Channing's place in the history of the thought of 
his time, would enable them to avoid some misrep- 
resentations that I have been astonished to see made 
in late publications. Dr. Channing's own words, as 
quoted in the "Memoir" together with the "Sermons 
on the Perfect Life," subsequently edited by Mr. W. H. 
Channing, largely make up for the partial expression 
of his mind that he made in print in his lifetime, as 
he once admitted to be the case in a conversation with 
myself. Perhaps I could not begin these Keminis- 
cences in a better way than by giving this conversa- 
tion, notes of which I find in my journal of the 
date. 

He had just been preaching one of those sermons 
on the soul's personal relations with the universal 
Father, which always brought out his fervid elo- 
quence, and seemed to lift his audience, for the time 
being, into his own devout vision. It had prompted 
a generally expressed desire to have it in print, of 
which I was glad to be the informal mouth-piece. 
He made his usual objection, that it fell short of 
what the subject demanded, and that he felt even 
while preaching it that it was " a low statement 
of a sublime theme." 

I replied, " that, if relatively low in comparison with 
his own exalted conception, it was a higher statement 
than the common ones, uplifting to those who heard 
it ; and since they sufficiently understood it to be af- 
fected, it would perhaps be more a means of growth 
than a sublimer strain." 

He said : " A preacher is always tempted — my own 
nature tempts me — to emotional declamation ; and 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



3 



earlier in my ministry such sermons as that of yes- 
terday were more frequent than now. But I see no 
real effect of these discourses that my auditors most 
frequently urge me to print ; they do not bring about 
any active sympathy with my most cherished pur- 
poses. The proof that devout feeling is not transient 
sympathy and mere emotion is that it prompts action, 
and gives it energy. Truth accepted as an aesthetic 
luxury has the same effect as what used to be called 
the opus operatum, which Luther combated as the 
'white devil' of his day, — more potent for the de- 
struction of spiritual life than the black devil ' who 
believes and trembles/ It is not trembling that I 
want to see under my preaching, however, but cheer- 
ful, vigorous, beneficent action of each for all. I am 
jealous of eloquence. It is often, I fear, but a siren 
song that lulls the active powers to sleep. To hear 
'that I have preached e an eloquent sermon ' on a 
deeply important subject gives me no pleasure. Ex- 
pressions of this sort discourage and pain me. If I 
had touched the depths of spiritual energy, my hearers 
would not express admiration of my words. When 
the apostles spoke with tongues, the multitude did 
not seem to observe the wonder, but, pricked in heart, 
cried, ' What shall we do to be saved ? ' not saved from 
punishment, as I think, but from sin, and to righteous- 
ness of life. The New Testament meaning of salva- 
tion is nothing 'less than this sanctification of will. 
The present popular fear of hell was then an unknown 
thing. The misery and deadness in sin that was 
around them, with its consequent degradation and 
crime, was that from which they would be saved, 



4 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



when the true spirituality of life was presented to 
them in the life and death of Christ." 

I ventured to ask, if his seeing no effect of his 
sermons in practice might not be owing, in a meas- 
ure, to his rather ungracious manner of meeting the 
warmly expressed wishes of his hearers to have his 
sermons in print; since, for practical action, there 
needs to be personal communication and a spreading 
of the same views through the community outside of 
the small congregation that listened to him. His 
congregation could not act without contemporary sym- 
pathy and association, and the sermons he had printed 
were on such very general subjects that his cherished 
ideas of personal Christian living were not very much 
known outside of his Sunday audiences. I asked, 
" Do you suppose you will ever reach the uttermost 
truths ? Those who hear you preach feel that they 
gain impulse and light from your sermons of this 
kind, even bv the hearing of the ear, and want vour 
written words to communicate world-wide." 

After one of those long silences which were often 
so formidable to those with whom Dr. Charming was 
conversing, but which only occurred, as those who 
were much with him gradually learned, when some- 
thing was said that really arrested his attention, he 
replied : " It is true that I have made only a partial 
statement of my mind in print. It has seemed to 
me that the world was retarded more than helped 
forward by religious teachers rushing into print with 
the expression of their own religious emotions ; for 
people are not vitally quickened by devout feelings 
caught from others by imaginative sympathy, instead 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 5 



of springing up from original conceptions of their 
own. Spirituality is not mere emotion, but also 
thought aroused in the mind by actual efforts to co- 
operate with God in the beneficence to man, which it 
is his benign purpose that all his children shall enter 
into with intentional sympathy, and so become intelli- 
gent instruments to execute his purposes. Ecclesias- 
tical domination in past ages has so depressed men 
By the terror of everlasting punishment (and it has 
not ceased to be threatened by either the old or new 
Protestants), that the springs of a free, self-respecting, 
filial worship have ceased to act ; and I have thought 
that the preaching most useful for our time was what 
would wake up the intellect to self-recognition and 
responsibility. Therefore, in my printed words, and 
more public discourses especially, I have thought 
most important to call attention to the primary duty, 
of claiming the rights of free thought, and of having 
life in ourselves, which Jesus asserts that God gives 
his Son, — who is nothing less than human nature, 
mankind ; though this great truth has only been 
expressed fully by Jesus himself, as yet." 

In the course of this conversation running upon 
the true nature of Christian devotion, he said : " I 
deny that religion is a sigh of weakness, as Benjamin 
Constant defines it. But this is too often the tone of 
the devout. Religion, as Christ taught and mani- 
fested it, is rather the Courage of pure Love, which 
is man's strength and special inheritance from God 
the Father. Pure love is not a mere affection looking 
for reciprocation ; it is a creative idea carrying the 
intellect beyond the mere understanding of the forms 



6 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



of Nature and of the laws that govern phenomena, 
into a comprehension and realization of that divine 
destiny of a generous intercommunication of men, to 
which Nature is only instrumental, for generosity is 
the spontaneous action of the soul when undepressed 
by selfishness. I have, at times, experience of this 
communion of mind and heart with the Eternal 
.[Father which Jesus seems to have had unceasingly, 
and which gives such unapproached — I do not say 
unapproachable — dignity to his own devout expres- 
sions, as we find them in the Lord's Prayer, expressly 
given as a model for all human devotion ; and espe- 
cially in those wonderful prayers which mingle so 
simply with his last conversation with his disciples 
at the Supper, when he speaks, now to them and now 
to the Father, in the same tone, — an altogether col- 
loquial spontaneous one, — in great contrast with the 
usual sanctimonious tone of prayer, as we generally 
hear it addressed to the conventional conception of a 
God, rather than to the very present Father of our 
spirits, 'in whom we live and move and have our being.' 
I find no parallel to these prayers in other records of 
human experience. The whole purport of the con- 
versation in which they occur is to make the disciples 
see that God is their, no less than his own, Father. 
He would have them realize the universal dignity of 
MAN, which they share with himself. It was for this 
purpose that he washed their feet. He said, at that 
time, that in a certain sense he was their master ; but, 
in the whole episode, he was evidently laboring to 
awaken in them the idea that real mastership is 
inherent only in the most complete serviceableness. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



7 



The son of man ministers rather than is ministered 
to ; and why ? Because the bond of humanity is love, 
— not ' love the beggar/ as Socrates calls it, but love 
the self-emptying and bountiful, which does not lose 
these characteristics when conceived as the essence 
of God ; whom, therefore, Jesus always named Father. 
Prophets before him had said God was like unto a 
father. Jesus saw clearly that God is nothing less 
than Father in living relation to all men, because in 
his own inmost consciousness he felt himself brother 
of all men, — son of man and son of God in one per- 
sonality." 

The subject, " What is a vital preaching ? " was often 
spoken of between us, because I became very desirous 
that he should let me copy his sermons for the press, 
to be used when he could preach no longer ; for I 
could do it, as he admitted, with less trouble to him 
than another, because I divined his handwriting, 
which w T as not easy to read. 

The circumstances of his giving w r ay to my impor- 
tunity, so far as to allow me to begin to do this, I 
must tell, because they illustrate some traits of his char- 
acter that seem least known outside of his own family. 

On one occasion he had preached a sermon which 
challenged a variety of opinions in his congregation. 
It was very like the one to which Dr. Gannett refers 
in his diary, quoted on page 218 of the biography of 
Dr. Gannett by his son. He says : — 

Dr. Charming preached a sermon of uncommon power, 
but of doubtful utility, in defence and illustration of the 
doctrine that the glory of Christianity consists, not in any- 
thing peculiar to itself, but in what it has in common with 



8 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



the teachings of reason and Nature ; its most important 
truths, — namely, the being and unity of God, human im- 
mortality, and the presence and aid of the Divine Spirit, — 
"being only clearer declarations of what had been whispered 
by these other teachers. Even the character of Christ and 
the character of God, Dr. Channing thought, were excel- 
lent and glorious rather for what they had in common with 
other good beings than for any attribute which they alone 
possessed. The discourse was powerful and bold; but, 
without more qualification than Dr. Channing intro- 
duced, I doubt if it was not suited to do more harm than 
good. 

The sermon of similar import, to which I refer, was 
preached at least ten years previous to this one of 
which Dr. Gannett speaks, and brought forth similar 
remarks from some that heard it. I reported these 
remarks to Dr. Channing ; among other things telling 

him that ■ said, " We cannot allow Dr. 

Channing to say such things." 

" Ah/ 5 said he, " did say that ? I think 

I must have said something worth while ! If it ex- 
cited any thought, even antagonistic, it encourages 
me immeasurably more than admiring acquiescence. 
I have no pleasure in gaining that. It is only what 
moves men's own thinking that arouses spiritual life 
and causes progress. This sermon may be one worth 
printing ! " 

I answered immediately, " Let me have it to copy 
then, now." 

He said, as he had clone before, " You can do some- 
thing with your time better than to copy." 

I replied, " I can copy when I can do nothing else. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



9 



It is so easy for me to copy that I can do it while 
listening to an interesting book read aloud." 

" I will test that at once," he exclaimed with an- 
imation and immediately rose and gave me the 
sermon and some copying paper. Then, taking up 
Cousin's translation of Plato, began to read into his 
beautiful English the " Timoeus." 

This was indeed a severe test, for when he read to 
any one what interested him, he kept raising his 
large, devouring eyes, to see if it was taken in ; and 
now he frequently stopped to get my assent or dis- 
sent to the thoughts expressed, while, in copying his 
difficult manuscript, I could not do it quite mechani- 
cally as in ordinary cases, his abbreviations often 
needing my consideration of the context. But I 
made a great effort to convince him that I heard and 
in a measure comprehended this most difficult of the 
Dialogues. When I had completed about half the 
sermon, I laid down my pen for a moment to rest 
my hand ; and he took up my unrevised manuscript 
and went over it, though I protested that it was not 
quite fair for him to do so. 

But he was satisfied, and said, "Well, you shall 
copy, when you are here, while I read to you." 

And it was a fact, that, while I was copying some 
fifty of his sermons, out of which he subsequently se- 
lected the volume of "Eleven Sermons," he did trans- 
late to me several volumes of Cousin's Plato, and the 
whole of De Gerando's "Du Perfectionnement Morale," 
of which I afterwards published a translation under 
the name of " Self-Education." 

But sometimes he was interrupted by the calls of 



10 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



friends ; and sometimes other books were read to us 
both, while I sat writing. 

I state these circumstances as a sufficient answer 
to a calumnious report which has not a little vexed 
his friends, both in this country and England, — that 
Dr. Channing ungenerously ezploited the enthusiasm 
of an impecunious young friend (whose name was 
given), taking up all her leisure from laborious work 
of her own, to write for and read to him. This report 
even reached his own ears, and was traced at last 
to a somewhat brilliant male gossip of America, and 
to a remarkably credulous female gossip on the other 
side of the Atlantic, who relied upon the authority of 
the first mentioned imaginative one. 

I am almost tempted to tell a few more instances 
of Dr. Channings peremptory kindnesses and delicate 
generosity to me, at his own cost ; but it involves too 
much personal detail, and I might be misunderstood 
as doing it from an unworthy motive. My intimacy 
with him came in large measure from the circumstance 
that I had his only daughter as a pupil in my school 
for seven years ; and he was one of those rare parents 
who knew what the relation ought to be of persons 
engaged in the greatest duty of one human being to 
another, — that of educating the free spirit, from the 
unconsciousness of infancy, into self-direction and 
self-culture. After school-hours were over, it was a 
great recreation to me to go and read to him in the 
afternoons or evenings. It gave opportunities for 
communication, in a familiar manner, upon all vital 
topics and the current literature. Thus I had a rare 
opportunity of observing his private character, which 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



11 



was more than usually veiled from contemporary 
society by the enforced seclusion rendered indispen- 
sable by his extremely feeble health, which, together 
with some other circumstances that I may speak of 
elsewhere, left much opportunity for misapprehen- 
sions; for society, so called, is largely characterized 
by a suspicious imagination, that gives the most 
ungenerous and mean interpretations to that which 
seems to be withdrawn from its observation in detail. 
But knowledge of Dr. Channing justified all the im- 
agination and faith of my enthusiastic youth. 



* 



CHAPTEE II. 



' I ^HE plan of these Eeminiscences renders it in- 
evitable that I expose myself to the charge of 
egotism; for they extend over that portion of my 
own life which was most subjective, and Dr. Chan- 
ning was a prevailing influence in all my intellectual 
and religious experience. But I shall endeavor to 
say nothing of myself except so far as may be neces- 
sary to bring out the traits of his character. There- 
fore, without further apology, I will go on and risk 
this criticism of the uncharitable. 

I remember one Sunday morning, when I was eight 
or nine years old, and living in Old Salem, where my 
parents attended the second church, some ladies 
called at our door when the church-bells were ring- 
ing, and requested to sit in our pew, " Because Mr. 
Channing was going to preach," as they said. 

My mother had intended to stay at home that day 
with the children, whom she never left with common 
hirelings, but sometimes with me as unconscious 
watcher. " Now, however," she said," I must go, and 
take Elizabeth, because," as I heard her explain to 
my father, " it takes genius to reach children." Mys- 
terious words ! which I pondered many years, and 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 13 



never quite understood, till I learned their meaning 
from Frederick Froebel, in my old age. They had 
the effect, however, at the moment, of fixing my at- 
tention on Dr. Charming. 

Our own minister, Dr. Thomas Barnard, wore, even 
in the week-days, a black gown and cocked hat, as 
was the old fashion, only then just passing away. 
But his presence had no great spiritual power in or 
out of the pulpit, though he was a kindly old man 
'who had seen better days as a preacher. I was there- 
fore the more surprised when I saw a small man, 
with a rapid, nervous motion, dressed in a traveller's 
great-coat, go into the pulpit, and, without sitting 
down (for he was a little belated), take up the hymn- 
book, turn its leaves quickly, and enter the desk; 
then slowly lifting up his large, remarkable eyes, 
with the expression of seeing something, begin to read 
a devotional hymn, with which the service always 
commenced (that is, it always began with a hymn, 
and Dr. Channing never read any but the devotional 
hymns in a Sunday service). 

My attention was fixed by that look, which I be- 
came familiar with in later years, and always associ- 
ated with the one recorded of the martyr Stephen, 
and which was now immediately repeated ; for as 
soon as the hymn was sung he arose, and, looking up 
again with the same expression, slowly uttered, in 
a corresponding voice, as he closed his eyes, the 
words, "From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art 
God our Father" I was thrilled as never before 
by the thought of a man's communing with God, 
face to face ; and years after, when I heard him 



14 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



read those words of the Psalmist, laying the same 
emphasis on the prepositions, I recognized how it had 
given me a sense of the Eternal. Of course I do not 
now remember the details of that prayer ; but later I 
came to understand what I then felt "beyond the 
reach of thought;" for Dr. Charming never prayed 
for anything outward, but only for the states of mind 
and heart that give a sacred interpretation to what- 
ever of outward fact may occur, making it ministrant 
of spiritual union with God and our neighbor. 

I had been brought up by a devout, unconventional 
mother, who had been educated to religion, like the 
Israelites of old, by the history of her country from 
the Pilgrim emigration to the Bevolutionary war, 
during which last she was born and grew up, amidst 
the sacrifices that her family enthusiastically made of 
ample fortune, leaving her in a proud poverty. And 
I certainly believed in the living prayers of my fore- 
fathers, one of whom was a Pilgrim of the second 
colony. But so conventional were the tone and phra- 
seology of all the public or family worship I myself 
had heard, that this was the first time I realized that 
any man now, like a prophet of old, conversed with 
God as friend with friend. 

In speaking of this unforgotten impression to a 
daughter of one of Dr. Channing's cousins, years 
afterwards, she told me of one similar that had been 
made by him on her mind, when she was still younger 
than I. She remembered sitting on his knee, and his 
showing her a beautiful leaf, and telling her how it 
came up out of the dark earth, because the sun, that 
was millions and millions of miles away, sent a warm 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



15 



ray down to touch the seed in the ground and call 
out of it a stem, that stretched up in the bright warm 
air and bloomed into leaves and flowers ; and how the 
sun gave them colors, and how they breathed out a 
sweet breath of perfume. Under the spell of his eye 
and voice, she said, an unbounded universe of light 
and life seemed to open upon her, and she thought 
that he knew all its secrets as nobody else did. Her 
feeling of his holy individuality was as strong as mine. 
But the beauty of mine was the sense of his union 
with God, a very present and not a distant God of long 
ago, — not terribly present, but attractively so. 

" Nothing is so spiritual as a voice," said Goethe. 
I remember that first day, while Dr. Channing was 
preaching the sermon, I speculated upon his appear- 
ance. He looked very pale and ill, and I thought he 
would soon die, 'and that it was because of the pain 
he had suffered that he was so well acquainted with 
God, and so sure of His love for him. But wdiat is 
remarkable, I did not confine my idea of God's love 
to himself, but received the impression that He loved 
me too, with everybody else. I remember asking 
myself if I should be willing to be ill (for I had the 
healthy child's imaginative horror of pain), in order 
to be able to know and love God as he did ; and so 
completely did his affectionate and confiding trust 
overflow upon and inspire me that I answered the 
question in the affirmative, and have never quite for- 
gotten the covenant. 

That this was not merely a subjective impression of 
Dr. Channing's personal piety, I had afterwards other 
evidence beside that of his little cousin's similar expe- 



16 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAKNING. 



rience. Nearly twenty years later, when visiting at his 
summer home in Newport, R I., together with one of 
my little pupils, who it happened was just nine years 
old, I saw that this power he had of impressing child- 
hood w T ith a sense of a Heavenly Father's presence 
was perennial with him. The house stood in the 
midst of an immense garden, and in the morning, 
after breakfast, the children and himself were imme- 
diately abroad, inquiring into the aspect of the earth 
and the sky, into the life of the flowers, and of the 
birds that made their nests in the undisturbed bushes ; 
and sometimes the children would stray quite to a 
distance, out of the sound of the little hand-bell with 
which he used to call the family, servants and all, to 
the family worship, — but not till the hurry of the 
morning work was over. Then, with one child on each 
side of him, he would read from the Bible (with an oc- 
casional word of explanation) in that wondrous sim- 
plicity of manner which made present to us the old Is- 
raelite amidst his temptations, sins, and repentances, 
or Jesus as he taught in the streets of Jerusalem or 
in the cities and on the seas of Galilee. Afterwards 
followed his prayer, in which was shown how com- 
pletely he divined and entered by sympathy into the 
experience of all present, taking into account, as it 
seemed, the peculiar character, trials, and temptations 
even of every child, though in a general way, and in- 
spiring the sense of the filial relation of all to the 
common Father and Comforter. 

My little friend observed, that, if all the children 
did not come spontaneously at the ringing of the bell, 
no great point was made of hunting them up, and she 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



17 



was very careful not to be far away from the door till 
after this hour of prayer. As soon as it was over, we 
scattered to our various occupations ; but she would 
always linger about me, and as soon as we were alone 
would put her arms round me and say, " Oh, what a 
beautiful time we are having ! " or something equiva- 
lent. Poor, dear little soul ! She came from a very 
difficult home, where her tender nerves and extreme 
sensibility were morbidly excited by a tender, imagina- 
tive mother, too anxious to make her children satis- 
factory to a cold, worldly, ambitious, exacting father, 
utterly incapable of reading a conscientious child's 
inner being. It was Dr. Channing's idea of religious 
education, to begin by opening children's affections to 
the " brother whom we can see," and be in relations 
of duty with, and to exact nothing of their sentiment 
of duty to God ; but pour around them the natural 
expression of adult devotion and sense of accounta- 
bility, letting their every association with God's name 
be full of reverent joy. 

" There must be freedom and abandon" he said, "or 
there is no real worship. When God is the object, we 
must let gratitude be more spontaneous than reflective. 
So only can it take on the character of infinity. Chil- 
dren can comprehend duties towards those around 
them ; but the relation to God is beyond the grasp of 
the mind, and its true expression and witness is un- 
calculating and incalculable love, full in the heart." 
These are nearly his words, and I am sure of the 
general idea, for he often expressed it. Dr. Channing 
thought the ordinary religious teaching, even of adults, 
made the relation of God and man a constrained, mer- 



18 



REMINISCENCES OF DE. CHANNING. 



cenary one, as it were ; and that the popular idea of. 
atonement obscured the original idea of the oneness of 
God and man manifest in Jesus, and which he had 
prayed should be brought forth in all who were to be 
spiritually united in love and truth with each other 
and with God, — an at-<me-ment " received " by men 
through Jesus Christ's life, whose supreme act was 
the surrender of his spirit into, the hands of the Fa- 
ther when his human life seemed a failure, because 
he found he could not save his nation as a nation. Dr. 
Channing did not believe the atonements of the Jewish 
ritual were meant by Moses as anything else than sym- 
bolic expression of that union between God and man 
which is the eternal fact that sin can only temporarily 
interrupt, and repentance with reformation restores. 
Hence he thought it was alike profaning the idea of 
God's love and the soul of childhood, to suggest to 
children the thought of an exchange of homage on 
their part for personal favor on the part of the Fa- 
ther, who "giveth upbraiding not" to the veriest 
prodigal, as soon as he "comes to himself" and re- 
turns confessing his mistaken course. 

It was this direct relation between these ideas of 
the parental love of God to his creatures and Dr. 
Channing's manner in prayer, which so impressed 
childhood with the reality and persuasiveness of the 
Divine Love. There was as little sentimentality as 
sanctimoniousness about him. He had a singular 
directness and transparency that harmonized with 
the candid simplicity of unconscious children, but 
often was oppressive to frivolous, commonplace, and 
conventional elders, who felt themselves solicited by 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 19 



his intensity. " Dr. Channing asks you how you do," 
said a brilliant lady of society, " and when you say 
you are well, he replies, ' I am very glad/ as if it were 
of real importance to him. And when he says ' It is 
a beautiful day/ you think of the morning of crea- 
tion, when the sons of God shouted for joy ! " 
, Within a few years after my first sight of Dr. Chan- 
ning there were many things that transpired to in- 
tensify my first impressions. I saw him twice when 
I was in an excited state of sensibility : once, when 
he came to Salem and preached the ordination sermon 
of John Emery Abbot ; and again when he came two 
years afterwards, and preached his obituary sermon. 

John Emery Abbot, son of the highly respected 
master of the Exeter School, was one of the excep- 
tional saints who glorified the rise of the Unitarian 
sect in New England. This is not the place to speak 
of his rare personality and angelic ministry. It was 
short, but has left an indelible impression on Old 
Salem ; and for the young people of all his congrega- 
tion it was a great experience, which in my case was in- 
timately associated with the idea of Dr. Channing, with 
whom (I had heard it said) he " had studied divinity." 

That ordination sermon is printed in Dr. Chan- 
ning's works. Its subject was the meaning of the 
apostolic command to " preach Christ ; " and as the 
Unitarian protest against tritheism (which he thought 
had come to be the popular interpretation of the word 
Trinity) had been growing more pronounced for some 
years, and was the theme of household discourse at 
that time, it was an immense satisfaction to my in- 
quiring mind to hear this statement, so replete with 



20 EEMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



"sweet reasonableness." It was a very few weeks 
after the ordination of Mr. Abbot that Dr. Channing's 
letter to Mr. Thatcher, upon the charges made against 
the Unitarian ministers of Boston by the Andover 
" Panoplist," appeared. These charges were not merely 
that they were Unitarians, who left out of their preach- 
ing all the saving doctrines of the New Testament, 
but that they were in a jolot to do this in a cunning, 
deceitful, hypocritical way, calculated with consum- 
mate art to rob the people of the faith handed down 
by their orthodox forefathers. 

It appeared from Dr. Channing's letter that no 
charge of heresy, not even the misrepresentation of 
the opinions ascribed in the "Panoplist" to Ameri- 
can Unitarians, would have called out any reply from 
him; but that this charge of " operating only in 
secret, intrusting only the initiated with their meas- 
ures, being guilty of hypocritical concealment of their 
sentiments, behaving in a false and hypocritical 
manner," were " crimes " in his eyes, and roused his 
self-respect as a gentleman and his loyalty to his 
brethren in the ministry, whose moral excellence he 
knew and honored, to repel the charge with indigna- 
tion. But it was indeed the " wrath of the lamb " 
poured out against the Scribes and Pharisees, w T ho 
appear in all ages, substituting the letter which is 
death for the spirit which is life eternal. This letter 
and the remarks on Dr. Worcester's reply to it are in 
print ; and there is an account of the controversy in 
the third chapter of part second of the " Memoirs " by 
his nephew, which ought to be read by all who would 
understand Dr. Channing. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



21 



He introduced a wholly new tone of religious con- 
troversy, and widely and deeply impressed the com- 
munity in and around Boston with the truth that the 
true Christian religion consists in righteousness of 
life and charity of heart, irrespective of speculations 
about the personality of Jesus Christ, whose character 
was the revelation of God's love, interpreting His 
law, and therefore the one interesting point respect- 
ing him. 

Later, when Mr. Norton and Dr. Ware replied re- 
spectively to Mr. Stuart and Dr. Woods, the opposing 
views of the Trinitarians and Unitarians were dis- 
cussed w T ith something of the old odium theologicum 
on both sides ; but for the short time that Dr. Chan- 
ning was the chief spokesman, the Orthodox were 
spoken of personally with the greatest human tender- 
ness and interpreted with the greatest magnanimity, 
as "knowing not what spirit they were of;" while 
what they said was dealt w r ith in all sincerity and 
simplicity, as false to the moral, and therefore to the 
religious, sentiments of the universal heart of man. 

The spirit of free thought and speech, and recur- 
rence to first principles in social and political matters, 
developed in the national revolutions of America and 
France, had broken the spell of ecclesiastical domina- 
tion over the minds of the laity ; and it was a common 
remark that they were in advance of the clergy in 
breaking the shells of abstract creeds, and coming to 
the kernel of religion. It was this Unitarian contro- 
versy that completed the transformation of the old 
Puritan churches, which, almost without exception, 
abolished their old platforms of Trinitariaiiism and 



22 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



Calvinism, and substituted formulas taken from the 
living words of Scripture. The Legislature of Massa- 
chusetts decided in favor of the congregations, who 
formed the liberal party, in all the controversies that 
arose between the congregations and the members of 
the churches (as those only, were called who partook 
together of the Lord's Supper) in regard to the pro- 
prietorship of church property ; while the few Ortho- 
dox would often separate and form new congregations 
by themselves. Dr. Channing's personal influence 
was always exerted on these occasions to prevent all 
unkind insinuations, and to cherish respectful expres- 
sions towards those who seceded because their con- 
sciences required them to cling to the old forms of 
thought. The liberty he claimed, the charitable judg- 
ment he craved, he bounteously accorded to those 
who differed from him in opinion. There were some 
young hot heads, whose intellectual activity predomi- 
nated, who did not understand this largeness of heart 
that would not let the " phraseology " which he de- 
precated obscure his own sight as it did that of 
those who used it, and thereby built walls of separa- 
tion between Christians equally sincere if not equally 
enlightened. He blamed harsh judgments in the lib- 
eral party more than he did in those whose very 
creeds logically involved intolerance. 

I largely owe to him the salutary conviction that 
nobody believes what is false because it is false, but 
because it seems to be true ; and that we can best set 
guards against our own narrowness, and prevent the 
spirit of the Pharisee in our own hearts, by tenderly 
inquiring into the mental history of our opponent, to 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 23 



learn how what appears false to us can seem true to 
him. For we grow in universality by respecting in- 
dividuals, and so help to make mankind as a whole 
the image of God, without losing personal life in a 
vague spirituality, abhorrent to " the human heart by 
which we live." 



CHAPTEE III. 



'TPHE Unitarian protest in New England, as I have 
already intimated, was not so much an intellect- 
ual as a moral movement. It was the moral senti- 
ment that was outraged by Dr. Morse's pamphlet on 
"American Unitarianism " and the "Panoplist" re- 
views of it, which had arraigned the liberal wing of 
the Congregationalists as a conspiracy of hypocriti- 
cal knaves, deliberately plotting to steal away from 
the people under their charge the foundations of their 
faith and the possibility of their salvation. 

The moral sentiment which was the soul of Dr. 
Channing's religious creed — the spirit which in- 
formed its letter — was startled out of its modest 
unconsciousness by this unrighteous outrage ; and he 
invoked the moral judgment of his contemporaries to 
know itself as the true Emmanuel, the God iviih us, 
" whose goings forth were of old," — even before 
Abraham's great inspiration to consecrate his family 
to " bless all the families of the earth," by initiating a 
religious family life of which Jesus Christ was "the 
bright consummate flower," — a man among his breth- 
ren, subject like them to all the sufferings and temp- 
tations that "flesh is heir to," but victorious, as he called 
all men to be, in the words : " Be ye perfect, as the 
Father in heaven is perfect ; " " To him that over- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



25 



cometh I will grant to sit with me in my throne, 
as I also overcame and am set down with my Father 
in his throne." 

Dr. Channing was a man of genius in the broadest 
sense. The purely intellectual grandeur of Milton's 
Satan touched his imagination to the most fervent 
expression. Washington Allston once said that he 
" valued no man's judgment of a work of art so much 
as Dr. Channing's; he has an unerring eye for 
Beauty." But the direction of his mental activity 
was determined by the overmastering predominance of 
the moral sentiment. Jesus' manifestation of char- 
acter in his human relations was that passage of the 
history of mankind that best satisfied this moral 
sentiment, kindled the energies of his will, and 
illuminated the thoughts that guided it; entrancing 
his imagination with an ideal of human perfection, 
and launching his heart upon the ocean of an un- 
bounded love of humanity. 

Whether the individual consciousness of Jesus 
dated back of his human birth, into God, as other 
men's di£ not, was, as he once said to me (when I 
endeavored to draw him into conversation upon the 
Arian and Humanitarian controversy), not so inter- 
esting a question with him as what was the commun- 
ity of Jesus' nature with the men of his own day and 
of our day. He found this in the moral sentiment 
and life, in whose more spiritual light the intellect- 
ual abstractions of trinity, atonement, unconditional 
election, reprobation, etc., constituting the written 
creeds of the churches, seemed to him transient 
figments of the brain. That oneness of Jesus and 



26 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



the Father which he affirmed to Philip, Dr. Channing 
interpreted as a spiritual union, such as he had 
enjoined on his disciples with each other and with 
himself, and for which he prayed at the Last Supper. 
The practical- question with him was, how to expand 
the narrowness, warm the coldness, cast out the 
selfishness of our human hearts, and realize in life 
the unity of spiritual brotherhood amidst all the 
antagonisms of human intercourse, as Jesus had 
done, and as he had more than intimated that all 
men could do, and in process of their life would do. 
How was this assimilation to Jesus to be effected ? 
was Dr. Channing's question. 

The processes of mind by which he came to take 
so different a stand-point from the Orthodox doctors 
of his day was therefore not a negative one of the 
speculative intellect, but a positive one of the moral 
spirit. His heart grew into a higher atmosphere, his 
mind rose to a higher plane of life, by making this ef- 
fort to be one with Jesus Christ in his human relations 
and in the performance of duties pertaining to them, 
— as he had declared them to be in the synagogue of 
Xazareth, on that day when he began his ministry 
so simply, exercising "the liberty of prophesying" 
guaranteed to every Jew who was thirty years old, 
by the wonderful Mosaic constitution of the Hebrew 
nation. 

Dr. Channing thought that to do the mil was the 
one method of learning to know the doctrme of the 
Father. But I would not be understood as saying 
that he was a mere moral empiricist. He did not 
spend himself "in the dream of doing, nor that other 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



27 



dream of done." He possessed moral sentiment, — 
was not possessed ly it. By appreciating and doing 
his duty to his neighbor, he thought to nurture that 
power to see God, whose germ is purity of heart. He 
worked six-sevenths of his time, according to the 
commandment, in the finite sphere of human life, to 
earn the reward of resting on the seventh in the con- 
templation of the Infinite God, — "that day without 
night. 5 ' In other words, he thirsted for principles 
which are not the abstractions of the human mind, 
the generalizations of finite knowledge, but imme- 
diate revelation to experience, — unveilings of God 
graciously made to the children of his love, who had 
become living souls by his breathing himself into the 
bodies which were the last evolutions of the material 
universe that his word called into light, Dr. Chan- 
ning did not dare to say that man cannot see absolute 
principles because he is finite, for he saw that that 
would be presumptuously denying God's power of 
revealing himself. " Man cannot comprehend God/' 
I have often heard him say ; " but he can, in a true 
sense, know God/' He thought it the distinguishing 
dignity of human nature, the essence of reason, that 
man is cognizant of the Absolute by his heart, and 
grows more and more so as he grows into beneficent 
mutual human relations. He saw no contradiction 
between the prophet's cry, " Who shall find out the 
Almighty unto perfection?" and the apostle's exhor- 
tation, "Increase in the knowledge of God." Both 
these texts suggested to him everlasting growth. 

The moral character of the Unitarian movement did 
not originate with Dr. Channing, of course.; but was 



28 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

the logical evolution of the Pilgrim emigration, — for 
that was a mighty deed, and lifted the first doers of 
it from the ground of the Calvinistic speculations/ 
from which doubtless they started, into that superi- 
ority to scholastic abstraction which Eobinson evinced, 
when he said that more light was to break out from the 
written word than Luther or Calvin had seen ; and 
which Soger Williams practically demonstrated, even 
before the first Pilgrims were dead, by founding the 
first community in Christendom — if not on earth — 
that separated Church and State; by recognizing that a 
man has certain rights and duties as a man before he 
becomes intellectually conscious of his relations and 
duties to God. His division of the Decalogue into 
the two tables, giving piety and charity each their in- 
dependent spheres, — the one to consecrate the indi- 
viduality of man, the other his sociality, — set free 
the moral sentiment, which had been deprived of its 
rights for ages by ecclesiastical tyranny. The Amer- 
ican and French Eevolutions were further exertions 
of human power to realize the freedom and dignity of 
man, and had helped to give a new method to relig- 
ious as well as political thinking. I have heard him 
express these ideas in these words. 

Dr. Channing found himself, therefore, in the Uni- 
tarian movement, because he had a temperament of 
that great moral sensibility which prophesies the 
future developments of spiritual truth ; and he had 
the genius for expressing that which his contempo- 
raries felt. Born and bred in Ehode Island, he had 
grown up in the political consciousness of his duty as 
a man, to protect all his fellow-men's freedom as well 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 29 



as his own ; to search out, in order to do all his du- 
ties, religious and moral, — not confounding them with 
each other, but enlightening the one by the other. 
Thus he was almost unconsciously educated to take 
an eminent position in that New England society 
which was the direct inheritor of the religion of the 
Independents, of which Eoger Williams's protest was 
the earliest blossom, and the Unitarian protest a 
later fruit. 

The Unitarian protest was primarily against ecclesi- 
asticism as not the Church of Christ. It had arisen in 
the laity rather than in the clergy, though many of the 
clergy sympathized with it by their common inher- 
itance of the spirit of independency, which had been 
preserved and spread far and wide by the Baptists, who 
always act politically with the Unitarians, maugre 
their having: retained the Calvinistic formulas of the- 
ological doctrine. (Thomas Jefferson said he got his 
first idea of the Federal Constitution from attending 
the conference-meetings of a Baptist society in his 
neighborhood, in which he saw how the freedom of the 
individual members was protected against the major- 
ity and the minister by their church polity.) 

Neither was the Unitarian protest against the 
Trinity as a philosophical statement of the relation 
of the living God to the triple nature of man, which 
is a complex of sensibility, intellect, and active force ; 
but it was against an unscriptural word, which had 
produced in the popular mind a gross tritheism, des- 
troying the simplicity of the act of worship. At least 
I know that was Dr. Channing's own protest, as he 
has intimated in his sermon at the ordination of Jared 



30 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



Sparks. 1 The Unitarian protest was also against 
the doctrine of an universal, inherited, total deprav- 
ity, that was practically believed to be destructive 
of the sense of moral responsibility, degrading mart 
into a chattel slave of Power, when, as Dr. Channing 
thought, God would elevate him into a freely obedi- 
ent son of Love. 

The controversy raged in Old Salem, where Dr. 
Worcester lived, who opened it by his comments on 
Dr. Channino''s letter to Mr. Thatcher. It divided 

o 

families, and was discussed by the children at school. 
I remember long and earnest conversations with chil- 
dren of my own age, when I was hardly eleven years 
old. One remarkable little girl, who had been indoc- 
trinated in Calvinism by a benefactress to whom she 
was enthusiastically grateful for giving her a school 
education, was precociously an adept in the dialectics 
of Calvinism. She contended that there was no 
chance for any one to be saved from everlasting pun- 
ishment who did not confess having hated God at 
first ; while I vehemently protested that I did not 
hate God, though conscious of doing wrong, — and ad- 
duced, as the proof of every one's freedom to be good, 
the fact that Jesus Christ, according to his own testi- 
mony, could never be convicted of any sin ; but that 
he " grew in wisdom " after becoming conscious of 
having " the Father's business " to do, and was " subject 
unto his parents," — and so must have been a finite 
human and not the infinite divine being. With the 
community at large, as well as with us children, the 
interesting question was, whether salvation was a 

1 See vol. iii. of Cliaiming's complete Works. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



31 



moral growth under the universal Father's eye, with a 
perfected elder brother to show the way ; or whether 
it was an arbitrary gift of sovereignty, in spite of 
moral disapprobation, because one who had never 
sinned had paid the price of it by suffering pain 
equal to the everlasting misery of all the human race, 
save the unconditioned elect. " The Moral Argument 
Against Calvinism " by Dr. Channing, published in 
the "Christian Disciple" in 1820, sums the reply made 
by most of the Congregational churches of Boston and 
vicinity which were founded by the Puritans ; and the 
history of the exceptions proves the ruling fact. 

But the protest of the Unitarians gradually lost its 
purely moral character, after the separation of the 
Congregationalist pulpit, and the establishment of the 
Divinity School at Cambridge, with its Professorship 
of Sacred Literature. 

In the spring of 1817 I was invited to Boston by a 
lady who had happened to meet me there four years 
before, and heard me express my bitter disappoint- 
ment at the baffling of all my afforts to hear Dr. 
Channing preach. She was then amused by my tell- 
ing her that it was my sole motive for accepting the 
kind invitation a lady had given me to make her a 
visit in Boston and partake of the festivities of " Elec- 
tion Day," which at that time was celebrated in Mas- 
sachusetts as a holiday. This lady's husband had 
just now become a member of Dr. Channing's church, 
and she expected her new minister to make the offi- 
cial call upon her ; and she wrote me that I could 
"see him in a room, perhaps, as well as hear him 
preach on Sundays as long as I would stay." It was 



32 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



nearly six weeks before the expected "call" took place, 
and in the mean while I heard him preach ; and his 
sermons made the impression on me of identifying 
the every day duties of social life, in the family and 
counting-room, with the most profound spiritual ex- 
ercises of self-surrender to God's will accepted by 
the heart. . I remember his speaking of the vicious 
insincerity of giving money for even the most benev- 
olent purposes, when owing and not paying debts, 
and thereby getting credit for generosity at the cost 
of personal probity. He represented the spiritual 
life as a web of moral exercises, purifying and elevat- 
ing all human intercommunication in a perpetual 
purpose of concurring with the will of God, and liv- 
ing in intelligent worshipful reciprocation of the life 
of the finite and infinite. 

I heard a great deal of his extremely feeble health, 
and how difficult it was for him to husband strength 
to compose and deliver his weekly sermon. This was 
confirmed by his appearance ; so that the first im- 
pression made on me was now deepened. He did 
seem to be nearer to God than other men, and his 
voice to come out of a very intimate heavenly world. 

I also went once into the Sunday-school of Berry 
Street, into which he came on a certain Sunday when 
he had not been able to preach, and heard him tell the 
children the story of Jesus' resurrection as an excep- 
tional instance of a departed spirit's using the mor- 
tal body for a season after death, in or.cler to identify 
himself to his disciples, to whose future strength for 
preaching the great truth that all men are immortal 
it was necessary that they should have all kinds of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 33 



evidence, even the sensuous, of the fact. He spoke 
of Thomas, who loved Jesus so much that he had pro- 
posed when Jesus persisted in going up to the feast 
where he felt sure he would be seized, as indeed he 
was, to go up to Jerusalem and die with him. 
Thomas had been so amazed and distressed by Jesus 
dying such a terrible death, that he could not believe 
it when Mary said she had seen him alive ; and he 
said that unless he could put his fingers into the 
wounds of his hands and side and feet, he could not 
believe that it was really he. And then how tenderly 
Jesus came and gave to Thomas the very proofs that 
he wanted and needed ; declaring at the same time 
that the millions and millions of people who in all 
after ages should " believe without having seen " were 
" blessed," — for he foresaw that they would believe 
through the preaching of Thomas and the rest, who 
all died martyr deaths to show their sincerity, and that 
they were testifying what they knew to be a fact. 1 

The calm, unexcited, explanatory tone with w r hich 
the whole, story was told, combined with the simple 
intensity of his look and the thrilling voice with 
which he uttered the word " Mary ! " when she did not 
recognize the Master (whom she did not expect to see), 
made the scene of the past startlingly real, so that, 
years after, it became the theme of a conversation 
between us, of which I shall speak in its proper time. 

During this visit I also accompanied my hostess to 

1 Some sermons " On the Resurrection of Jesus " by Dr. Eli- 
phalet Nott, printed since his death, give in a masterly manner 
the very arguments for the validity of the external fact, which I 
have often heard Dr. Channing adduce. 

3 



34 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



two meetings of the ladies of the congregation, who 
met with Dr. Channing in the vestry to read and 
talk over the Gospels. On one of these occasions, 
the passage under consideration was the account of 
Jesus' baptism ; and the question was raised whether 
there was internal evidence of the facts stated, as 
well as what the words really imported. 

Dr. Channing, at this meeting, seemed to take 
the position of fellow-inquirer, and tried, to the best 
of his ability, to get the ladies to own sincerely to 
themselves and each other whatever seemed to them 
unreal, unlikely, or incredible in the text, But it was 
difficult; and often, when he had asked a tentative 
question, the silence was appalling, and he was obliged 
himself to answer most of the questions that he asked. 
I remember he was quite decided that there was no 
dove even in form ; but that the words " like a dove " 
expressed the gentleness with which the light fell on 
Jesus when he came up out of the water. There 
was a question of whether there might have been a 
distant thunder-storm at the time, accounting for the 
"light," and for some saying "it thundered." The 
outward fact was left rather in doubt, while the moral 
meaning of the act of Jesus in submitting himself 
to John's baptism was dwelt upon, and the nature 
of the evidence to John the Baptist's mind, that Jesus, 
rather than his own ministry, was the fulfilment of 
the long cherished hope expressed in the whole course 
of Hebrew prophecy. He spoke of the symbols of 
water and fire applied to the two ministries, — the one 
representing the purification of the external life by 
sincerity of repentance and reformation, the other the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



35 



transformation of life by love of truth and good for 
their own sakes, and because truth and good are 
nothing less than the presence of God to the conscious- 
ness. I remember very distinctly the words of one 
sentence: "The Scriptures are not themselves rev- 
elation, but the records of revelation made to men who 
reported the truths revealed." Therefore, any narrative 
or a statement of principles was to be determined as 
inspired, " by using all our powers of understanding in 
the freest possible manner." He thought the written 
words probably never did full justice to the inspired 
knowledge of the writer, but were to be interpreted 
by the hope and faith of the reader, which w 7 as of kin- 
dred origin to the revealed idea. One of the ladies 
said it was desirable to have some test of inspira- 
tion not of this subjective nature. Dr. Channing 
replied : " God gives us this desire of certainty to 
stimulate us to acquire the inward test by self-dis- 
cipline and prayer. The Hebrew Scriptures taught 
that though all the people might be prophets, and 
under certain conditions prophesy [which word, he 
said, meant to preach according to the Quaker prin- 
ciple, and did not necessarily imply intimation of 
future events], it remained the duty of the people to 
judge for themselves as to who was the true and who 
the lying prophet, and abide the consequences of the 
decision." 

At another meeting the passage of John was con- 
sidered in which Jesus says, " What if ye shall see 
the Son of Man ascend up, where he was before ? " 
This brought out from one of the ladies the humani- 
tarian argument versus the Arian doctrine of Jesus' 



36 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANXIXG. 



personal pre-existence that Dr. Channing seemed to 
believe ; and I had read enough of this controversy 
in the contest between Mr. Norton and Professor 
Stuart, and in Dr. Carpenter's criticism of the Scrip- 
ture text, to feel greatly interested. I thought Mrs. 
Wigglesworth took the most reasonable ground, and 
that Dr. Channing's complete identification of the 
person of J esus with the dateless religion of which he 
was the bearer 1 separated J esus too much from the 
status of the brethren, whom he came to save by 
means of. vivifying their moral sentiment with his 
own great experience. I wanted to ask him if it 
would not take away from us some of the personal 
encouragement that we needed to derive from Jesus' 
actual attainments in the sphere of human duties, to 
suppose that he did not really have his spiritual dis- 
cipline in the same world ? But, though I was not 
afraid of Dr. Channing, I was so of the silent ladies, 
and had the grace to remember that I was a stranger 
and interloper, hardly thirteen years old ; and so this 
question had to be deferred for nearly ten years. 

At last the long desired hour came, when word was 
brought to me that Dr. Channing was in the parlor. 
I almost flew to the interview, and as I ran into the 
room I was met by him (to whom my hostess had 
probably spoken of my intense desire to see him) 
with a gracious, beaming smile, and both hands 
stretched out to take mine. 

Seating me by his side, he began the conversation 
in his usual way, by asking questions. What were 

1 See note to his Sermon on " Preaching Christ," vol. iii. of his 
complete Works. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



37 



the people doing in Salem that was interesting 
to me? I should as soon have thought of being 
afraid of an angel of Heaven as of him, and went on 
eagerly to tell him of Mr. Abbot's beautiful influence 
over us children, and the societies he had favored our 
getting up to give aid to the poor, one being to teach 
poor children to sew. Also of the great reformation 
of the school system of Salem, made at that " era of 
, good feeling," when the school board was no longer 
elected according to political party lines, but an equal 
number of Federalists and Democrats were united to 
rehabilitate the public schools, that had fallen into a 
woful plight during the long political fight in Essex 
County. My father was on the new committee, 
which met in his ^study to take counsel ; and as I 
was always sitting in a corner to study my Latin 
lesson, I heard all the friendly debates, and learned 
much more about the school question than of Latin; 
for J udge Story, Mr. John Pickering, and other of the 
most eminent men of Salem were on the committee, 
and they were extremely earnest to clo all that the 
American Constitution allowed and required for the 
public education. My father was also that year 
the physician of the almshouse, and the new over- 
seers of the poor were doing a corresponding work by 
the experiment of a poor-farm, piggery, etc. I used 
often to go with him on his daily visitation, and 
therefore could tell of the remarkable action of 
Superintendent Upton in attracting the paupers to 
work, and educating the children in shoemaking and 
other trades. 

Dr. Channino; listened with mreat interest to all I 



38 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

told him, and asked me a great many questions as to 
the details. I need not say how happy I was to be 
talking with him, and how justified I felt for my 
heart-protest against a great deal of talk I had heard 
within a few weeks about the difficulty of communi- 
cating with him. 

Three or four years after I learned that on that 
day he said to his sister, Mrs. Francis Channing, " I 
have had a genuine pleasure and surprise to-day; a 
child ran into my arms and poured out her whole 
heart in utter confidence of my sympathy ! " 

It was a marked «charaeteristic of Dr. Channing to 
love to see the soul divested of all conventionality, 
even if it were that of a child or a most ignorant 
person. 



CHAPTER IV. 



HT^HE obituary sermon that Dr. Channing preached, 
in 1819, upon Mr. John Emery Abbot, giving 
a vivid portraiture of that young " man of the beati- 
tudes," enriched my idea and associated my im- 
pressions of both with the doctrine of the literal 
humanity of Christ and the original freedom of men 
from total depravity, — doctrines especially brought 
out in the Unitarian controversy, which at that time 
engaged my interest and constituted a large part of 
my reading. All Dr. Chaiming's articles in the 
Christian Disciple " I devoured ; and also two ser- 
mons that he published, — one upon " War," and one 
upon " Eeligion : a Social Principle ; " the last at the 
time of the Massachusetts Convention for the amend- 
ment of the Constitution, in 1820, when the Third 
Article, compelling a tax for the support of religious 
worship, was finally thrown out, as inconsistent with 
the principle of American nationality, which serves 
religion best by leaving it free from the Uzzah 
hands of human law. 

During these years, the effect on my mind of the 
doctrinal sermons that I listened to from the lips of 
the young Unitarian preachers who supplied the 
pulpit of the Second Church in Salem, and from 
the Hollis Professor, Dr. Ware (who repeated his 



40 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



whole course of theology on alternate Sundays with 
the Eev. Dr. Kirkland), together with my read- 
ing of ecclesiastical history and Biblical criticism, 
with other studious inquiries for the sake of making 
out a creed, was to make me something of a Unitarian 
doctrinaire ; ancl^oing to Boston again in 1820, when 
I heard from Dr. Channing half-a-dozen sermons, I 
felt that I had been running too exclusively 'into 
critical habits of mind, to the detriment of that 
spiritual growth which criticism checks, but the 
doing of the natural, social duties in the love of God 
cherishes. He was preaching at the time upon our 
responsibilities for each other's virtue and spiritual 
happiness, to promote which are essential duties 
illustrated by Christ, who taught us, by his life as 
well as death, that we were sent into the world to 
save each other from sin, raise each other from 
spiritual death, and help each other into an ever- 
increasing communion of " the just made perfect " in 
heaven. 

I was, perhaps, the more impressed by these ser- 
mons, that seemed to me more profoundly spiritual 
than any I had ever heard, because I was just on the 
eve of entering upon the vocation for which I had 
been educated from childhood, — I will not say the 
vocation of teaching a school, but of educating chil- 
dren morally and spiritually as well as intellectually 
from the first ; which my mother had taught me was 
the most sacred of the duties of the children of the 
Pilgrims who founded the Eepublic to bless all the 
nations of the earth. Perhaps it was at this time, and 
not when I visited Boston in 1817, that I heard Dr. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



41 



Charming speak to the children in the vestry con- 
cerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ, of which I 
wrote in the foregoing chapter ; and it is possible that 
some of the reminiscences of the sermons I mentioned 
there had this later date also. 

At this time I did not see him except in the pulpit. 
He was very feeble in health, and to be able to preach 
once on the Sundays he was obliged to rest and be 
nursed carefully during the intervening week. I was 
told that he was transferring to Miss Pickard (who 
afterwards became the wife of Eev. Henry Ware, 
Jr.), and to the two elder daughters of Mr. Stephen 
Hiooinson, Jr., — Elizabeth and Martha, both of whom 
married clergymen later, — the visiting of the poor 
that he had hitherto divided with his friend Jonathan 
Phillips, who was also a deacon of his church. I 
remember one anecdote of these friends that I then 
heard, which shows strikingly the personal tender- 
ness of Dr. Channing's charity. Among those visited 
were two old pauper women who became insane, the 
second catching the disease from the first (which is a 
near danger in all cases). They were both harmless, 
but were impressed with the same fixed idea that 
they were to be poisoned, which made them distrust 
all the world except Dr. Channing and Mr. Phillips ; 
and it was a fact that for several years they would 
only eat from the hands of these gentlemen, so that 
one or the other visited them every day ; Mr. Phillips, 
who never left Boston in the summer, supplying Dr. 
Channing's place when he was in Phode Island. I 
am sure that this is a fact, because T once heard Dr. 
Channing incidentally refer to it, and then asked him 



42 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



about it. He said they only took one meal a day, 
which seemed enough for their bodily health, and 
they died within a few days of each other. 

In August, 1821, Dr. Channing went to Europe for 
his health. After a year's attempt at following my 
vocation in Lancaster, I came in the spring of 1821 
to Boston, with letters of introduction to his sister- 
in-law, with the intent of establishing myself as a 
school-teacher in Boston. She recognized my name 
as that of the child whom Dr. Channing had spoken 
of several years before, and took me to see him. Of 
this interview I only remember that I felt in general 
that he understood and approved my principle, — 
that the development of character is the first thing to 
be aimed at in education, and the communication of 
knowledge the second ; and that I felt consecrated 
by the impressiveness with which he gave me his 
blessing and a God-speed. 

Before Dr. Channing returned from Europe I had 
left Boston, after a year's work there, for the banks of 
the Kennebec. During the year 1823 I lived in Hal- 
lowell, in close communion with some English Uni- 
tarian families who had come to America with Dr. 
Priestley a quarter of a century before, and settled on 
some inherited land in Maine. One of these immi- 
grants was a pupil of the school of Belsham ; and all 
of them held Belsham's humanitarian view of Jesus 
Christ. Of course they had found no sympathy among 
their neighbors in Maine, and had not spread their 
doctrine ; but they were respected for their rare phil- 
anthropic character, and had generously supported 
with their money the Calvinistic minister by whom 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



43 



they were denounced every Sunday for more than 
thirty years, and, as one of them remarked, by whom 
"every Christian office was denied them except 
burial." In the neighboring town of Gardiner they 
had a relative who was an ardent Episcopalian. He 
had contributed very largely to build a beautiful 
Gothic church, where, a great deal of the time, he 
had to read the liturgy and sermons himself. Here 
the Unitarians of Hallowell, who had also assisted 
in building the church, were in the habit of going 
to take the Lord's Supper, from which the Episcopal 
Church excludes no person of Christendom willing to 
come to its altar. But in the year 1824 the Unita- 
rians of Hallowell, who had been increased to a con- 
siderable number, largely by the influence of Dr. 
Channing's sermon at the ordination of Mr. Sparks 
in Baltimore, concluded to separate themselves as a 
congregation, and call a minister. 

Dr. Channing's sermon, which had been published 
in 1819, w r as the first public statement of the general 
belief of Unitarians. It was published and repub- 
lished, between the years 1819 and 1824, till a larger 
number of copies had been sold than any publication 
had ever been known to attain in America ; and which 
has only been equalled since by that of Webster's 
speech on nullification, in answer to Hayne. It was 
extensively read by laymen everywhere, and by young 
men especially ; and it made multitudes conscious that 
they were Unitarians. The Unitarian society in Hal- 
lowell was one of the many ultimate results. 

In the year 1824 his sermon on the ordination of 
Mr. Gannett was printed. The pupil of Mr. Belshain 



44 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



found some things to controvert, which he called 
" mysticism," in both these sermons of Dr. Chan- 
ning. But this very "mysticism" attracted many 
whom the humanitarians had failed to convert. 

The new society was also augmented by the very 
measures taken by the Orthodox to block its progress. 
It was just at the era when the revival system was 
at high tide, and in this moment of peril the Calvin- 
istic minister, who had proved unable to prevent in 
his parish the development of this heresy into organic 
form, went a long journey, and left his pulpit to an 
" evangelist " from Princeton, by the name of Dant- 
worth, who, appearing at this moment in Hallowell, 
announced that there was to be an outpouring of the 
Holy Spirit, whose operations he had come to super- 
intend ; and he very often repeated that he should be 
" a witness " at the last day against all who did not 
receive the heavenly boon proffered. (I am under- 
stating, not overstating, the coarse language of this 
so-called evangelist, who for three or four weeks took 
possession, as it were, of the town of Hallowell, and 
successively of the other towns on the river as far 
north as Norridgewock, and turned them topsy- 
turvy.) His method was to go into any meeting- 
house which would admit him, and, after making his 
general announcement, appoint meetings — some of 
the church, and others of the people — at different 
places in the town, for every day of the week, begin- 
ning at five o'clock in the morning and continuing 
all day. The meetiugs of members of the church 
were for prayer that his meetings with the people 
might be successful in " getting grace." Thus a furor 
of excitement was produced. 



REMINISCENCES OF DK. CHAINING. 



45 



It was a year or two after this that Dr. Lyman 
Beecher preached the sermon in Boston at the An- 
nual Convention of the Congregational Ministers of 
New England, in which he gave, in detail, this plan 
of getting up a revival, which was then in vogue: the 
general principle being, " not to let any person who 
was moved return to his own till he surrenders, 
which would generally take place within the week." 
These were Dr. Beecher's own words, for I myself 
heard the sermon, and was struck with the correspond- 
ence of the plan, point by point, with Dantworth's 
procedure ; and can never forget the closing words of 
one passage, uttered in a high key : " All the souls 
that 7" expect will be the crown of my rejoicing in 
heaven were got in this way." 

Fifty years of liberal Christianity in New England 
have certainly done something toward ameliorating 
the tone of revivalism ; for now its preachers do not, 
as then, speak of themselves as exclusive angels* of 
the Lord; and they say earnestly that the Holy 
Spirit cannot justify those who persist in getting 
drunk, lying, cheating, and disobeying all the Com- 
mandments. They now speak more of salvation from 
sin than from the penalties of sin, and identify sin 
somewhat with wrong-doing to the neighbor ; dwelling 
on the attractions of heaven more than on the terrors 
of hell, and expressing some tender sympathy for 
their sinful audiences, rather than asserting personal 
authority over them, and threatening to be " ivilnesscs 
against them" at the last day ! 

At last, however, Mr. Dantworth defeated himself. 
At Norridgewock, as elsewhere, he had meetings of 



46 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



inquiry in a vestry, where the darkness was just made 
' visible by one or two small lights. There was an 
aisle which parted the seats of the house, and it so 
happened that when he went in he found all the 
people sitting on one side of it. He strode up to the 
desk, turned round and faced them, and, as was his 
wont, sang an exciting solo in the clear, loud voice of 
a Venetian gondolier. He then said : " Let those who 
have obtained a hope go and sit on the other side of 
the aisle." Bather hesitatingly, more than half of the 
company rose and obeyed him. (He had been work- 
ing upon their feelings, or nerves, for several days 
and nights.) As soon as they were seated he spread 
out his arms and cried : " So you will be divided on 
the day of judgment!" There was a moment's dead 
silence, when a man on the left rose and said : " Sir, 
we have often heard you say that you were to be a 
witness on the day of judgment ; but this is the first 
time we learn that you are to be the judge !" 

This simple sentence of common-sense acted like 
Ithuriel's spear to make the Devil manifest to all 
eyes. With a simultaneous impulse the whole assem- 
bly rose, and left the house; and Mr. Dantworth the 
next morning took the stage-coach and left the coun- 
try, over which he had swept like a hurricane for 
nearly a month. 

The features of this revival 1 have lightly touched ; 
and my next reminiscence of Dr. Channing is my 
only reason for mentioning it at all. I was in 1824 
at Gardiner, as a resident governess in the family of 
the Episcopalian gentleman I have mentioned ; but I 
went to Hallowell several times during the revival 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



47 



weeks, and the observation of such an excitement at 
the moment, and of its effects afterward, opened a new 
chapter of human nature to me, giving life to many a 
passage of human history that I had read, but never 
realized in my imagination before. It irresistibly led 
me to think much of the mode in which the duty of 
preaching to all manner of men was to be done. I 
saw that the sense of religious duty, which is the 
most vital characteristic of human beings, was so ready 
to leap into consciousness that even the self-righteous 
and arrogant method of Dantworth was borne with, 
and succeeded in some instances to awaken it. But 
the insulting intrusions upon individual liberty and 
violations of personal dignity by the evangelist and 
his coadjutors —for a multitude of preachers flocked 
to his side from a neighboring theological school, 
together with numerous lay preachers from all the 
churches in the vicinity, all o£ whom seemed to be 
only passive conductors of Dantworth's autocracy — 
was a method so opposite to that of Jesus, who never 
denounced any men but those who claimed and exer- 
cised spiritual authority over other men, or presump- 
tuously condemned and stoned sinners, that the 
contrast was radiant with an awakening truth to my 
mind. I seemed for the first time to understand the 
meaning of the word gospel, as I saw how the unholy 
spell of an autocratic, unsanctified selfism was dis- 
solved by a single individual's expression of the 
reasonable self-respect of a man, in the presence of 
an audacious Pharisee. 

The preaching of the Eev. Dr. Walker and 
other Unitarians, who immediately after the revival 



18 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 

came to ordain the young pastor of the new Unita- 
rian church, was a great refreshment and comfort ; and 
made all the more impression, especially upon the 
young men who had been excited to think, but also had 
been shocked and disgusted, by Dantworth. Many 
who had been brought up in the creed that Dant- 
worth for a time made to tell upon their fears, turned 
with a sense of relief and a generous ardor to the creed 
of the Unitarians, which aimed to cherish moral 
feeling and power by identifying faith in God and 
love to man as motive. 

The relevancy of this account of the revival to my 
reminiscences of Dr. Ch aiming will be made patent 
in the next chapter. Its effect on my own mind was 
intensified by another thing, of which I must now 
speak. The gentleman in whose family I was resid- 
ing at Gardiner, and the kindred family of English 
Unitarians in Hallowell, were great land-owners in 
Maine, and were much engaged in settling it by sell- 
ing farms, disposing during the year I was there of a 
farm every day, on an average. 

As the settlers had to. be credited till they should 
earn the money to pay for their farms, these gentle- 
men were obliged, in their own interest, to consider 
the character of the buyers, and to draw up the deeds 
on such conditions as would encourage them to hon- 
esty, industry, and thrift. 

But both gentlemen were much more than mere 
merchants intent on increasing their wealth. They 
were Christians as well, — one Trinitarian and one 
Unitarian in theology ; but. with equal moral senti- 
ment they felt themselves bound to deal with their 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANMNG. 



49 



fellow-men as brethren to be saved both in "the life 
that now is " and in " that which is to come." 

I was necessarily a listener to much of their con- 
versation ; and I found that also as American citi- 
zens they felt their responsibility with respect to the 
future character of the population, and were very 
particular, in drawing up the deeds, to guard the 
rights of the children, who were of course legal la- 
borers for their fathers till they should be twenty- 
one years of age, but on that very account, in equity, 
joint owners of the property to be acquired. I ex- 
pressed my amazement that the children's interests 
could not be intrusted to the parental instinct ; but 
Mr. Gardiner used to say that nothing was so instinc- 
tive as selfishness, and that it did not include any 
generous love of offspring without the ministration of 
the Church (by which he meant the Evangelical Epis- 
copal Church) ; while he at the same time admitted 
that it was quite impossible to establish among these 
pioneer people this kind of church, for they could 
only be touched by the itinerant revivalists. 

It seemed to me very sad that this newly-planted 
country should lack that moral culture of their social 
affections which a religious ministration would give, 
if only it could take its character from that fatherly 
nature of God, which Unitarians taught that Christ 
fully revealed in his human life. The Unitarian 
sympathized with my views, of course ; but declared 
that the preaching of the young gentlemen from the 
Cambridge Theological School smelt too much of the 
lamp, and was more adapted to cultivated than to un- 
cultivated audiences. The Wesleyan Methodists, he 

4 



50 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



said, combined with the revivalist method a more 
affectionate view -of God than did the Calvinistic revi- 
valists of whom I had just seen such a terrible speci- 
men ; and by their doctrine of perfection kindled in 
their converts love with hope.. It happened, however, 
that I heard a sermon from one of these Wesleyan 
Methodists at this time, which probably was not a 
favorable specimen ; and also heard a description of 
one of their wild camp-meetings, in which people 
were united to the church in trances of excitement 
that seemed to me to reduce men from rational free 
agents, capable of "judging of their own selves what 
is right," to mere victims of nervous passion. 

Under these impressions I wrote a long letter to 
Dr. Channing, whose sermon at the ordination of Mr. 
Gannett I had just read, and told him of the moral 
prospects of these new settlers in Maine, of the 
conditions put into the deeds of their farms by Mr. 
Merrick and Mr. Gardiner, and the little likelihood 
that even this would be done by less fhoughtful and 
conscientious land-owners; and, in view of the ne- 
cessity of a missionary administration of religion 
to these people, I asked him if it would not do a 
double good to have it a rule of the Divinity School 
of Cambridge, that the second year of the course of 
study should be missionary work of this kind, which 
would open to the eyes of the young men the book of 
the human soul in its primal needs, to which the 
deeper riches of the gospel of Christ correspond. 

I expected to leave Gardiner in a few weeks for 
Brookline, and I told him I would call on him (early 
in May, 1825) and receive his answer in a conversa- 



REMINISCENCES OF DE. CHANNING. 51 



tion, without putting him to the trouble of answer- 
ing so long a letter ; for it numbered, I think, eleven 
sheets, in which I enlarged upon what seemed to me 
the demoralizing 'effects of the revivalism I had seen, 
and whose disastrous effects seemed to me especially 
to fall upon the ignorant and uncultivated, who need 
the gospel of Christ for intellectual as well as moral 
culture, if they are to be " perfect as the Father in 
heaven is perfect," which was the goal set by Christ 
as the great salvation for even the least of his 
brethren. 

Of the conversation which took place I made quite 
a full record in my diary, and it has a special interest 
in this time of revivals ; 1 but I must defer it till the 
next chapter. 

1 1877, when Moody and Sankey are preaching all over the 
Country. 



CHAPTER V. 



TN making notes in my journal of my first conversa- 
tion with Dr. Channing, I was only intent on 
putting clown the things he said on whatever points 
we talked of, and I did not record all the interjec- 
tions of remark and question that I threw in myself; 
so that what he said appears in my narrative more of a 
monologue than it really was. It is necessary, how- 
ever, in order to make his remarks intelligible and 
to account for the turns of thought, to reproduce from 
memory some of my part; and, doubtless, I reproduce 
it in better phrase than I expressed it then, but I 
am sure of my thought in its substance. 

He received me very kindly, and leading me to the 
sofa ' seated me beside him, and with his customary 
directness said : " Your letter very much interested 
me, and also very much pained me. The relation of 
a parent to his child, with the self-forgetting love that 
belongs naturally to it, is the primal revelation God 
makes of himself to men. The undeveloped mind 
does not often give an account of it to itself ; but 
nevertheless it becomes the. ground of natural relioion, 
interpreting the revelation made by Jesus Christ of 
the new name Father that he gave to the Hebrew's 
God ; for Jehovah had come to stand in the minds of 
his countrymen for an arbitrary and partial tutelar 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 53 



divinity instead of the universal Love that takes 
6 captivity captive.' 

" To have a foregone idea of making children la- 
borers for merely worldly gain desecrates the primal 
fountains of religious and moral life, and precludes 
natural religion, which in all nations, and even in 
savage life, gives some consecration to marriage and 
parentage. A want at this vital point cuts off, at the 
root, all hope of a population sound at the core. That 
men so wise and good as Mr. G. and Mr. M. should 
think it necessary to put such conditions as you 
mentioned into their leases is appalling to me. I 
have believed mercenary calculations, in the relations 
of marriage and parentage, to be the last fruit of the 
artificial civilization that values the raiment above the 
life. My hope for our new young country is founded 
on the conviction, that under our crucleness is to be 
found the simple wild stock of the race, full of its 
original social instincts and natural affections. I 
have thought that the labor of all the members of a 
family, in company with each other, to attain a com- 
mon comfort, or perhaps a wealth to be shared equally 
by all, would take the curse of servility out of labor. 
Servility despoils not only the dependent many, but 
the class served by them, of their human dignity. To 
obey the natural father has none of the degrading ef- 
fect of menial obedience to a task-master. To forget 
oneself in a loving service is not inconsistent with a 
majestic self-respect. It tends to define in the mind 
an ideal through which the understanding joyfully 
accepts the relations of God and man to each other, 
— so elevating to the weaker party because utterly 



54 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



tender and self- forgetting on the part of the stronger. 
Pure love is a conscious self-emptying, measured only 
by the object's need. Such is the relation of God to 
man, as Jesus presents it to us in the story of the 
Prodigal Son. In that most remarkable parable, the 
revelation which is made by the family sentiment to 
every mortal born of woman is recognized as the 
germ of the religious sentiment, which Jesus takes 
for granted to be an universal endowment of human- 
ity. In the elder son the sentiment 'has died out, in 
a degree, into a worldly selfishness. But the appeal, 
' This thy brother was lost, but is found/ intimates 
that it is there, though sleeping, eclipsed by the 
jealousy of the moment, and only needs to be touched 
by the word brother, to wake up in all its original 
% power. The Christian missionaries of the earliest 
times took advantage of this natural religion, which 
seemed to have died out in the corrupt Eoman empire, 
but in ancient Rome had made the chastity of woman 
sacred, and consecrated the family relations. It was 
still alive in the northern nations, consecrating woman 
as God's priest. 

" True religion did not begin for the human race 
with the advent of Christ ; he came to purify, elevate, 
and restore it. The Hebrew religion had grown out 
of the recognition of a family as God's chosen temple, 
in which the father built the altar and was the priest. 
The history of Abraham's family, told with great 
simplicity, — tempted, falling, repenting, rising into 
power in the world, because Joseph did not forget the 
God of his fathers who founded it, — became a sacred 
Scripture. When the family became a nation, its 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



55 



history was also recognized as sacred Scripture. The 
' tabernacle/ the place of its national worship, was 
representative of the family home, in which the 
priest-fathers were represented by a tribe set apart to 
conduct the common worship, in forms symbolical of 
holy living in all the relations of men to each other 
and to their fathers' God. When these priests forgot 
their origin and usurped secular power, they became 
the object of prophetic denunciation and providential 
chastisement. Jesus went behind the whole Mosaic 
dispensation, because it had forgotten that it ' was 
made for man and not man for ' it. He even went 
behind Abraham to the Son of Man who was before 
Abraham. Whenever Jesus says ' 1/ he identifies 
himself with man; 'Son of Man' is his favorite self- 
designation, and his alternation of it with ' Son of God' 
contains the specific revelation that f brings life and 
immortality to light ' for every human being. This is 
the advance Christianity makes on all religions, not 
only Pagan but Hebrew ; though Moses approached 
and prophesied Jesus Christ, when calling the He- 
brew nation 'Son of God.' And one of the later 
prophets says : ' Like as a father pitieth his children, 
so Jehovah,' etc." 

Here I asked him if the persistent preaching in 
New England, for two centuries, of the sovereignty 
rather than the paternity of God had not necessarily 
had for its effect to stimulate a hard, cold wilfulness, 
contemptuous of Nature's beauty, and destructive to 
all play of the gentle natural affections, — changing 
family life from an interchange of loving service into 
despotism and slavery. Even when there is no special 



56 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



revival preaching, throwing the nerves into a state of 
insanity by the dread of instant and everlasting 
damnation, the grim fact is assumed in the doctrine 
of total depravity, bereaving of all natural delight in 
being alive a people left more to the mercy of the 
pulpit than is the case of any other people on earth, 
and quenching the youthful heart and imagination. 
Does not this doctrine pervade the common speech, 
and produce that condition of character which is so 
unnatural, and seems to put those who listen alto- 
gether beyond the reach of true Christian preaching, 
which at first was full of congratulation to the hearers 
of the good news ? The preaching they now hear — - 
of a God crying vengeance against those who owe him 
no love, because cursed with a totally depraved will 
at birth — can only make them (like the proselytes 
of the Pharisees) "two-fold more the children of 
Hell." Is it not a duty to try the effect of the more 
benignant religion which Unitarians believe in ? 

" But this Unitarianism," said he, " which so many 
people seem to think is the last word of the human 
mind, is only the vestibule !. We have everything to 
learn ! " There was a peculiarly anxious upward 
inflection in his voice as he said this, as if he would 
ask if this were all that I was depending upon. 

I hastened to reply, " Oh ! I know that ; but it is a 
vestibule, at least." He seemed relieved to hear me 
say this, and continued : " Mr. M. is right ; our young 
men smell too much of the lamp. But they differ 
from the Orthodox in this : the latter, full of their 
exciting creed, are all on fire at first, as they well may 
be, to snatch people from the material flames of an 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



57 



outward hell by outward means, but their fire burns 
out soon, because kindled only by exaggeration ; while 
anything like the persevering zeal that the kind of 
missionary work that you propose demands, is kindled 
in our young men only through long contact with a 
parish, in which they come to sympathize in the joys 
and sorrows of real life. In the theological school 
their activity is engaged in an intellectual and nega- 
tive process, getting rid of those abstractions that 
have discouraged and chilled their own minds, and 
debased with selfish fear of everlasting pain the 
popular mind, or at least destroyed its sensibility to 
the more delicate and profound emotions of spiritual 
religion. I am afraid that were they to go on this 
mission they would do little good. Oh ! if I could 
only go ! " he said, rising and folding his hands with 
an intense expression of feeling. 

"Don't you think," I ventured to say, "that it 
would do the theological students good to try this 
kind of ministry ? They would do no harm to their 
hearers, certainly ; and would it not be well to open 
the living book of Nature to the young ministers ? 
I judge by my own recent experience. I have been 
a student of controversial divinity, like them, and a 
good deal of a Unitarian doctrinaire, — though I hope 
never merely that ; but I feel impatient of self-com- 
placent rejoicings over mere freedom from the horrible 
doctrine of everlasting punishment, and a repudiation 
of the mercenary bargaining of the popular doctrine 
of atonement. Should not something be made of 
the fact of an original innocence, which, in a being of 
sensibilities and energies that eternities are not to 



58 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING-. 

exhaust, must be an active productive power ? Does 
not the New Testament say it is man, not God, who 
receives the atonement by Jesus Christ ? 1 Is not 
true religion a purification and elevation of the human 
will into concurrence with the divine, rather than ab- 
solute immolation of it ? Will not preaching the 
whole counsel of God's love awaken an energy of 
joyful life and love in men, fulfilling the demands of 
the soul with a blessedness that will satisfy the innate 
love of excitement as well, but more healthily than 
the revivalists do ? In the Methodist excitements, 
and in the Calvinistic revival I have lately witnessed, 
I have seen that there is a tremendous force of life 
always ready to press upward through all the surface- 
quiet of every day. "We call it a love of excitement, 
but what does it mean ? In a confused, bewildered 
way it asks, What is the destiny of this spirit within 
me, grasping at every hope of enjoyment, and capa- 
ble of so much anguish ? Instead of its being an- 
swered as these revivalists answer it, by threats of 
everlasting damnation, which exasperate innocent 
self-love into the madness of a selfishness forgetful of 
every being but the individual and narrow self, should 
it not be interpreted as a God-given generosity of 
the human soul, only to be satisfied with heroic, self- 
forgetting action for the present as well as future good 
of all others, — blessing ' the life that now is,' as well 
as ' that which is to come,' by showing that Christ 
' was not sent into the world to condemn the world/ 
but to reveal in his own person the infinite gener- 
osity of unfallen human nature, and to call his breth- 

1 Romans, v. 11. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



59 



ren of the human race to act it out fearlessly, assuring 
them that by losing what they first imagine to be all 
of life, they will save that .which does not live on 
bread alone ? By watching the effect of the preach- 
ing of Mr. Walker, at the time of Mr. Everett's 
ordination in Hallowell, on the wide-awake young 
men who had been excited, shocked, and disgusted 
with Dantworth's violation of human dignity in his 
public and private tirades which he intruded without 
leave given, I saw that our preachers would have a 
real advantage by following in the wake of the revi- 
valists with the soul-enkindling doctrine that makes 
every man his neighbor's friend and redeemer. The 
insanity of the nerves produced by threats of ever- 
lasting punishment must needs be transient in its 
nature, and leaves a dreary sense of want : cannot this 
be supplied with the ministration of the Christian 
doctrine of growth in grace from the seeds of generos- 
ity, which, even under all the discouragements of the 
popular religion of despair, do put forth their blossoms 
in everybody's youth ? Is it of any use to deny origi- 
nal depravity, unless a positive original generosity shall 
be preached instead ? Could not men be quickened 
to cry out, What shall we do to save, rather than to 
he saved ? Would not the latter follow, as glory fol- 
lows virtue, if the first were singly sought ?" 

" Yes, certainly; that is the apostolic doctrine ! " he 
replied with animation. "And it would unquestionably 
do good to our young preachers to go upon our fron- 
tiers and identify the spirit of American enterprise 
with this noble idea, and give a Christian significance 
to the motto of our nationality, — E pluribus unum ; 



60 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



the first nationality the world has ever seen generous 
enough in its scope and tendency to admit of a free 
development of Christ's love within it. Did you 
get this idea of man's intrinsic generosity of nature 
from Mr. Walker's preaching at Hallo well ? " 

I replied that I could not say that I did ; but " his 
preaching was consistent with nothing less, and there- 
fore he is so eminently effective among our preachers. 
He always uses Christian doctrine.s to quicken the 
sense of moral responsibility and power ; to which he 
often says no measure can be set, if it be sought by 
the means of growth of which we are capable, and for 
which we are responsible." 

■ " Where did you get this formula then, which is 
not the common one ? " 

To answer this I had to go into my own personal 
experiences, and told him of the exercises of my 
mind in the old days of the first Unitarian contro- 
versy, when I was driven to studying into the phe- 
nomena of child-life around me, including the one 
anecdote known of Jesus' childhood. I will not 
repeat this personal history here, as its only value for 
my present purpose is that it struck out from himself 
some confidences of a like nature. He told of the 
life-long impression made on himself of the inborn 
generosity of human nature, when, in a school-boy 
play at Newport in his childhood, he saw a very small 
boy thrust himself into a crowd of cruel boys who 
were beating unmercifully a large one. The little 
fellow threw his small body across the large boy to 
shield him, heedless of the blows he received in his 
stead ; and after a moment the violent ones suddenly 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



61 



desisted from the whole thing. It was a revelation 
of the power of love to give courage and to conquer 
evil. 

He went on asking me a good deal about my own 
childish emotions and thoughts, and told other ex- 
periences of his own. He said that he did not, like 
most men, look back with joy and longing to his child- 
hood; it was a painful season to him. The boys at 
Mr. Eogers's school were cruel, tormenting brutes, and 
rough to each other. The system of school discipline 
was harsh ; a great deal of corporeal punishment was. 
used, etc. ; and he was in great perplexity of mind 
about people, only relieved by his love of Nature's 
beauty. He liked to be alone in the open air ; was 
very fond of the beach and every aspect of the ocean; 
and as he first conceived of God as the Maker of the 
world, his conception of him was sublime and beau- 
tiful. His favorite reading in the Bible was the Song 
of the Three Children and the Psalms of Praise. 
But for these early impressions of the God of Nature, 
he said he should have been peculiarly unfortunate, 
for he was brought up under the preaching of the 
celebrated Dr. Hopkins, the originator of that special 
phase of Calvinism which makes it a condition of 
salvation to accept with joyfulness the fact that we 
deserve everlasting punishment. 

"When I was quite young," he said, " I heard a 
sermon from an itinerant preacher, which roused in 
me the first doubt of human veracity. I was taken 
by my father in a chaise to a meeting, to which he 
went to hear a famous preacher of the revival kind. 
My father, I think, took me rather to give me the 



62 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



drive, and relieve my mother of the care of me, than 
with any expectation of my attending to the sermon. 
Bat I could not choose but attend; for the preacher 
made such a terrific picture of the lost condition of 
the human race rushing into hell, and of hell and 
the strength of the Devil in his efforts to snatch from 
God the creatures he had made, that it filled my 
imagination with horror. It must have been done 
with some artistic skill, I think, for it vanquished the 
preachers own imagination, so that in very moving 
tones he besought his hearers to flee from the wrath 
to come into the arms of Jesus, who was described as 
wounded and bleeding at the hand of the inexorable 
God, who exacted from him the uttermost penalty 
due to a world of sinners." 

Dr. Channing said he thought there must haA^e 
been some sceptical protest in his heart, though his 
imagination had been completely mastered by the 
terrible picture ; for when, as they were getting into 
the chaise to go home, his father replied in the affirm- 
ative to a neighbor's remark, " Sound doctrine that ! 
Leaves no rag of self-righteousness to wrap the sinner 
in ! " he remembered that a new weight of certainty 
that the case was a real one fell on his soul. "All 
were sinners,- — ail were under the condemnation," 
as the preacher had said. 

Supposing in his childish simplicity that this 
terrible state of things was just discovered, he ex- 
pected his father would say something to him on 
their drive home about " fleeing from the wrath to 
come," which was the never-to-be-forgotten burden 
of the sermon. But he did not. On the contrary, 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



63 



to his astonishment, after riding a little way, he be- 
gan to whistle ! Yet on arriving at home, when 
his mother asked him if he had been disappointed 
in the preacher, he replied : " No ; he is a strong 
man." 

They sat down to supper, and it was eaten as if 
nothing extraordinary had transpired. After supper 
his father took his pipe and a newspaper, and 
sat down before the fire, putting his feet upon the 
mantle-piece in his usual careless way. The child 
looked on with astonishment; but the relief to his 
mind, as he decided on the spot that it was all 
false, was replaced with the strongest sense of indig- 
nation that his feelings had been so wantonly trifled 
with, — and there followed a permanent or ever-recur- 
ring doubt as to the truth of human speech. From 
that time he constantly neglected what people said, 
in the endeavor to divine by their actions what they 
really meant, — a habit of mind that had clung to him, 
and only in his later years been surmounted so far as 
to dissipate his early gloom. In another connection 
he spoke of a great change having come over his 
feelings within the last three years. His European 
journey had begun a new era. The contrast of the 
petrified evils of the Old World with the fluidity of 
the New had given him the youth which he had 
missed in its true season. Beside this, his own chil- 
dren, who were now the objects of his study, were a 
perpetual revelation to him. . 



CHAPTER VI. 



TIE bulk of this following chapter was completed 



+ before I saw, in the October issue of the " Uni- 
tarian Keview," Mr. MacCauley's very able lecture on 
Dr. Channing, w T hich certainly does beautiful justice 
to his large, free, unsectarian spirit. I think that 
had he lived till now, he might have advanced from 
the Arian towards the Athanasian doctrine of the re- 
lation of Jesus Christ to the eternal Father, as it is 
explained in an extract from Mr. Upton : 1 " The 
co- substantiality of God and Christ ... is the most 
central and vital truth of Christian theology and 
philosophy: I mean the inseparable co-presence of 
God and man in human nature." But whether it is 
an advance of thought to conceive of evolution as 
applicable to the living soul of man, I must be per- 
mitted to doubt. That the human body is an evo- 
lution from less highly organized body may be 
affirmed ; and that it may evolve ever finer organ- 
ization, enabling an ever more adequate manifesta- 
tion of the eternal soul of man, is perhaps prophesied 
in the transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension of 
Jesus Christ, and in what is called his miraculous 
working power, wdiich, Dr. Channing thought, instead 
of violating any laws of Nature, only illustrated 




1 Unitarian Review, p. 453. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



65 



higher laws than are ordinarily experienced by 
men fallen from original purity of body and will 
through moral lapse and inheritance of its physical 
effects. He frequently intimated that the time might 
come when all men would be raised to that sovereign 
place in Nature which the memoirs of J esus exhibit ; 
and I have frequently heard him quote in this con- 
nection Paul's words : " By man came death ; by 
man, also, cometh the resurrection from the dead." 

In order to appreciate how Dr. Channing's belief 
in the miracles was consistent with his conception of 
the sacredness and irrefragability of Nature, it is 
necessary to know that he considered the material 
universe the word of God, quite as much as Hegel 
did, according to the statement of Stallo. 1 

" The line dividing matter and mind," he used to 
say, " is too undefined for us to be able to say that 
the resurrection of the body of Jesus, and its becom- 
ing invisible in the ascension, was anything more 
than an immense increase of the power by which the 
soul makes the countenance express varying emo- 
tion." I remember one time when Mrs. Channing 
said to him in my presence, " My dear, how are we to 
know our friends in heaven?" he replied, with a 
flashing smile, " By their looks to be sure ! have you 
never seen the soul ? " He had none of the hard dog- 
matism of some modern naturalists who confine the 
powers of apprehension to the five senses ; and, on 
the other hand, he did not limit the scope of these 
senses. He believed in a world transcendental to the 
material universe — and even more substantial — 

1 Philosophy of Nature. By J. B. Stallo. 
5 



66 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



which is objective to the heart's desires," whose grati- 
fication makes the fulness of even human life. 

In conversing with the so-called Free Eeligionists 
of the present day, who are an evolution from the 
Unitarians and "Free Light" Quakers who consti- 
tuted the Liberal Christians of the earlier part of the 
century, I always notice that they do not quite do 
justice to the advanced views and free, intellectual 
spirit of Dr. Channing on these points. 

Even Mr. W. C. Gannett, who speaks of him with 
such affectionate reverence in his very remarkable 
biography of his father (whose life and name were in- 
tensely identified with Unitarianism), more than once 
expressly affirms that Dr. Channing was the leader 
of the Unitarian sect. And in a discourse upon the 
history of LTnitarianism, which I once heard him de- 
liver at Horticultural Hall in Boston, he spoke as if 
the interests of Unitarianism, per se, so influenced 
Dr. Channing's mind that it somewhat limited or 
checked its progress. iSTor in that history did Mr. 
Gannett mention (for he is too young to have had the 
opportunity to know) that Buckminster's remarkable 
conversational powers and social grace did more to 
identify the Liberal Christian party in Boston with 
Unitarianism than the influence of any other one 
man ; while his personal fidelity as a pastor gave to 
him, and to the religious views he professed, a place 
in the heart of families, which was the counterpart of 
that he held in the circle of gentlemen who met on 
Sunday evenings in his parlors for conversation, the 
memory of whose charm was still fresh when I 
visited Boston in 1820-21, and gilded the clouds of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 67 



sorrow that had hardly begun to disperse after his 
untimely death. 

Dr. Channing was kept very much out of the social 
gatherings at Mr. Buckminster's by his feeble health 
and its accompanying inevitable seclusion, and thus 
he had the. less part in all that was done at that time 
(but with no conscious purpose) to give an esprit cle 
corps and the Unitarian name to the Liberal Chris- 
tians, who still were so little sectarian that they 
were genially associated in the Anthology Club with 
the accomplished Dr. Gardiner, Eector of Trinity 
Church, and others, not Unitarians. 

I know that among the Unitarians, for several years 
of my early residence in Boston, strongly marked 
sectarianism and all bigotry had a certain odor of 
vulgarity about it, as well as was counted positively 
immoral. And between 1826 and 1832, when I was 
in the habit of spending my evenings at Dr. Chan- 
ning's whenever he was in his city home, the word 
Unitarianism was hardly ever uttered. One little 
circumstance was significant of his state of mind on 
this subject. In one year of this period, the Am- 
erican Institute of Education was established ; and at 
one of its early meetings a paper was read, said to 
have been written by a lady, in which the ground 
was taken that the progress of Unitarianism was a 
sort of gauge of the progress of education. I was not 
present, and did not know the fact that it was as- 
cribed to me, till one day Dr. Channing told me of it, 
and added, with a little laugh, " I took it upon my- 
self to contradict it ; for I thought you had probably 
incurred the charge because of your familiarity with 
me, and so I felt bound to exonerate you." 



68 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



And yet it was also a fact that the question of 
what was the life and thought of Jesus Christ as 
stated in the New Testament was the staple subject 
of our discourse. And whenever there was occasion 
for the Unitarians to undertake any Christian work, 
or to assert their right to equal respect with other 
religious bodies, Dr. Channing was ready to preach 
the sermon, or to do whatever good fellowship re- 
quired, in the cause of religious freedom. 

Some of the more zealous young Unitarians did 
always, however, complain of his indifference to the 
sectarian interest and name. He was never especially 
popular with the Unitarian ministers ; and I remem- 
ber hearing one of the elder ones compare him unfa- 
vorably not only with Buckminster, but with others 
now generally admitted to be his inferiors. He sel- 
dom attended the meetings of the Suffolk Association. 
I remember to have abruptly entered his study one 
day, when this meeting was at his own house, and 
was struck with the unwonted air of embarrassment 
of Dr. Walker and others, who told me afterwards 
that the conversation there was always constrained. 
In his simplicity and earnestness, Dr. Channing 
wanted to turn it upon those great subjects which 
" would have befitted the case, were Jesus himself 
bodily present to lead the conversation," as Dr. 
Walker rather impatiently added. This was the true 
explanation, and not any sanctimoniousness on Dr. 
Channing's par-t, for never was any one more free 
from it ; nor was it any ecclesiastical spirit, of which 
he had not a particle. But he had little health or 
strength for company ; and when he met those dedi- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 69 



cated like himself to the vocation of Christian teacher, 
he wanted to use the precious time for the highest ex- 
change of thought on topics sufficiently remote from 
dogmatic theology and controversy, but touching the 
transformation of society from selfishness and frivolity 
to intellectual seriousness and spiritual philanthropy. 
On the other hand, the hard- worked ministers of Bos 6 - 
ton and vicinity gathered for social relaxation from 
their really wearing pastoral and pulpit services, and 
needed an hour of gayety to recuperate their bodily 
forces. 

But to return to my reminiscences of that first con- 
versation, in which nothing was more marked (and 
observed by me at the moment) than that to him Uni- 
tarianism w 7 as, as he said, " only a vestibule " of the 
temple of truth. So far as it was the name of a 
church party he repudiated the name, though on doc- 
trinal grounds he opposed the word Trinity as mis- 
leading and inadequate, if only because it is merely 
an abstract statement of the divine name, a produc- 
tion of the subtle Greek intellect after the death of 
Jesus and his apostles. The un scriptural word, as he 
thought, took God away from the heart of humanity 
into the dry region of logical formula, doing no justice 
to the Divine Fatherhood which was the essence of 
Christ's revelation, first made to his own countrymen, 
who in his day had lost the living God, in a similar 
w r ay, by the Jewish cabala. To drop the word Trinity, 
however, and substitute the word Unity for it, was 
still keeping in the abstract, and could not give the 
quickening of the spirit incident to the name of 
Father, which Jesus used exclusively. 



70 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



In looking back and remembering what he said on 
this topic, I am conscious that I understand him 
better now than I did at the moment. He said that 
he talked freely with Coleridge about the doctrine of 
the Trinity, who was very eager to explain to him 
his apprehension of it ; " for," said he, " so far from 
saying, as most Trinitarians do, that the doctrine is 
an ineffable mystery, confounding the reason, and to 
be passively worshipped, Coleridge declares it to be 
the perfection of Eeason, which can only be developed 
in us by our grasping the idea of the relation of infinite 
Love and infinite Wisdom in one Spirit, communicable 
to those who are filial by a free obedience." I think he 
said that the formula Coleridge used for the Trinity 
was "the relation of Love and Truth in the Holy 
Spirit, in communion with which man finds his life : 
Love being the Father and Truth the Son." " Nothing 
can be more different, therefore," said he, " than Cole- 
ridge's Trinity from that . conceived by Dr. Samuel 
Worcester, who, when he objects 1 to Unitarianism as 
giving God ' a joyless solitude/ the idea of which he 
says chills him, certainly asserts a veritable society of 
three personal beings, which is doubtless the gross 
popular conception, — a tritheism which destroys the 
simplicity of worship and all spiritual sincerity in 
affectionate souls who can understand the Father, 
first of Jesus the sinless, and then of all men capable 
of repentance and aspiration. ... The Son of God, in 
whose anointing all men are to partake, was eter- 
nally begotten, and lived in the Holy Spirit before he 

1 See Dr. Samuel Worcester's Second Letter to Dr. Channing, 
in 1815. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



71 



was made flesh, and dwelt among us. He was par- 
tially revealed in the making of the worlds. Only 
by assuming the conditions in which mankind is 
born, could Christ, an anointed Son of man and God, 
show that all God's children inherit the spiritual pos- 
sibility that overcomes the world and sits down on 
God's throne ; and that none are essentially or neces- 
sarily sinful." 

Both now and always Dr. Channing entirely refused 
to enter into controversy upon the pre-existence. Once, 
some years after, I remember he said that this w 7 as 
merely a question of abstract ontology. " The human- 
itarians," said he, " believe Jesus w 7 as sinless, in point 
of fact ; and that separates him from the rest of man- 
kind more than mere pre-existence could. I do not 
deem it a question of importance, and may change my 
view with respect to it. I am aware that I have 
never put my mind upon it ; and once I know that 
I passively received from tradition the dogma that 
Christ was the Creator of the world, including man, 
for one day when I was on a journey I went into the 
church of a small country town, and was startled to 
hear a preacher upon our duty to love our Saviour 
Jesus Christ begin his sermon with the dictum, 
' Because he is our creator ' ! It immediately struck 
me that if this w r as the relation, the Bible writers 
would have made a great deal of it ; and by the time 
the preacher had finished his sermon my mind had 
come to the negative. I have thought it gave dignity 
and interest to Christ's mission to believe that an in- 
habitant of heaven would come to earth to save men. 
But this may be a shadow of past errors. You 



72 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



young thinkers have the advantage of us, in coming 
without superstitious preoccupation to the words of 
Scripture, and are more likely to get the obvious 
meaning. We shall walk in shadows to our graves. 

" I do not think we gain any knowledge of God 
that is spiritual, or which makes us spiritual, by the 
abstracting faculty of the intellect ; logic belongs to 
a lower region of our nature than the moral. Intel- 
lectual philosophy is not religion, which consists in 
loving and serving one another in the Lord ; because 
the Father wills that his children should, through 
this love and service, grow, and mutually become one 
another's happiness. 

" In the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth," he 
continued, " I find a theology more spiritual than in 
the controversial writings of either Unitarians or 
Trinitarians. Coleridge's knowledge of the Divine 
Nature is better expressed in his tragedy of ' Bemorse,' 
in the soliloquy of Alvar in the dungeon, than by his 
philosophic formulas." As I had not read this solil- 
oquy, he went to his bookshelves, and, taking down 
a volume of Coleridge's poems., read to me with an 
infinite pathos in his voice, and his large tender eyes 
constantly seeking the response of mine, the passage 
beginning, " And this place our forefathers made for 
man ! " 

In subsequent conversations he expressed the same 
views which are to be found in his printed discourse 
on the imitableness of Christ's character ; that " all 
minds are of one family," " whose dignity is in truth, 
and whose happiness is in pure love, whether found 
in earth or heaven." I was immensely impressed at 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 73 



this time with the substantiality of his conception of 
the life to come, as but another mansion of the Fa- 
ther's house, opening immediately out of this. He 
certainly did believe Christ was personally pre-exist- 
ent, and that his coming into suffering relations with 
humanity was his choice, in order to prove that the 
inhabitants of heaven love men purely, and for the 
sake of loving ; and that in doing what he did, he 
was the voluntary instrument of the divine Love 
that begot the whole spiritual family, showing that 
God's own happiness is in a self-forgetting, self-emp- 
tying bounty not to be confounded with the desire 
of being loved, rather than of loving. He said, " The 
popular conception of divine love is below the ideal 
of human love, which has no thought of self in it. 
The demand that we should act for God's glory is 
misleading because of the low meaning attached to 
the word glory in other connections ; the popular con- 
ception is, in fact, that of infinite selfishness demand- 
0 ing the homage and self-sacrifice of the creature, in- 
stead of being God's spontaneous giving out of himself, 
which is the essence of creativeness, — the * giving, up- 
braiding not,' which quickens and inspires its like in 
men." He here spoke of the breathing act, signified by 
the word spirit. I cannot pretend to recollect, for fifty 
years, Dr. Channing's exact words in expressing these 
ideas ; but I cannot forget my own new spiritual con- 
ceptions under the influence of his eloquent discourse, 
whose precise words were often recalled later, when 
I listened to his frequent discourses on the future life, 
two of which are to be found in his printed works. 
These first conversations with him made an era in my 



74 



REMINISCENCES OF DK. CHANNING. 



life ; for the three previous years had been so filled 
with painful moral experience that I had become de- 
pressed in hope. But Dr. Chanhing gave me back 
my childhood's faith, which had once glorified the 
creed that I had worked out so laboriously under the 
instructions of Drs. Priestley, Lant Carpenter, the elder 
Ware, and Mr. Andrews Norton. Though, intellectu- 
ally I continued to deny the doctrine of total deprav- 
ity, I felt myself individually " dry as summer dust ; " 
for my own experience of the practical effect of the 
Unitarian discipline, which seemed to propose a meas- 
urement of each one's personal attainment by the 
manifested righteousness of Jesus Christ, was tremen- 
dously severe ; and I was often struck by the fact that 
my young friends who believed in total depravity 
did not seem to think of their personal transgressions 
and sins like the Unitarians, who were overpowered 
with a sense of sin by seeing that they came so short 
of " the great pattern," — not allowing themselves 
(at least I did not) any relief from self-reproach 
by remembering that our life is woven into a social 
web, by. which it inevitably shares the average tone, 
unless we have that exceptional force of character, or 
exceptional genius, which makes leaders. In their 
zeal to save their hearers from relying on a substitu- 
ted righteousness, the Unitarian preachers of the early 
days unwittingly left them deprived of the moral aid 
which is legitimate, proposing to conquer fate by 
agonies of naked will. As I learned later, God does 
nothing for man but by the instrumentality of man, 
(Jesus being included in man). 

But to hear Dr. Channing speak of Love, in virtue 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



75 



of its essential character of self-forgetfulness and self- 
sacrifice for the sake of its object, as the substance 
of even the divine happiness, was truly a baptism 
into the living water of refreshing truth, and into 
the lambent fire of the Holy Ghost. 

While we were still speaking of Coleridge (to whom, 
as Dr. Channing then said, and often afterwards re- 
peated, he " owed more than to the mind of any other 
philosophic thinker"), Mrs. Channing came into the 
room. (And as I write this, it brings . to my mem- 
ory the fact that this conversation extended over 
two consecutive days; for, the first day, Dr. Chan- 
ning asked me to come and dine with him the next.) 
Mrs. Channing joined in expressing the tenclerest 
interest for Coleridge in his fearful struc^le with the 
weakness of opium-eating, which, as they learned, had 
been brought on by a physician's prescription, made 
in the vain purpose of subduing frightful pain, — 
probably fits of neuralgia, — to which he was subject 
in his spine. The remedy doubtless reproduced, for 
it did not destroy, the disease ; and he had put him- 
self under the care of his friend, Dr. Gilman, whom 
he empowered to restrain him by force, whenever he 
should be so beside himself with agony as to indulge 
unduly in his perilous medicine. 

Dr. Channino* had taken letters of introduction to 
Coleridge from his brother-in-law, Mr. Washington 
Allston, the great painter, who was a profound ad- 
mirer, disciple, and friend of the philosopher and poet, 
with whom he had travelled on the Continent of 
Europe and resided in Italy ; and whose unbounded 
admiration of his genius was equalled by his rever- 



76 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



ence for his Christian character. And the same 
reverence for the last was expressed by the Gilxnans, 
and by them impressed on the Channings. 

Already the spirituality of Coleridge's philosophy, 
as expressed in his " Biographia Litteraria," had sup- 
plied the wants left by the study of Locke, and 
introduced Dr. Channing to the transcendental 
philosophers of Germany, in whose systems he said 
he had also been interested by Madame de Stael's 
" Germany." Therefore the questions he asked un- 
locked the eloquent tongue of Coleridge on his fav- 
orite topics. " I was amused," said Dr. Channing, " on 
my return to America, to read in a letter he had 
written to Mr. Allston, that he had seldom met with 
a person so interesting in conversation as Mr. Chan- 
ning ; for my part was simply interrogative : I made 
not a single original remark ! To be a good listener, 
it seems, is a large part of conversational talent ! 
He was so delighted to get a patient open ear for his 
cherished thoughts, that he poured them out in a 
flood on all subjects, — the transcendental philosophy, 
Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, and especially on 
his idea of the Church of England, which was wholly 
new to me, and not at all acceptable in England to 
any party, for he included in the National Church 
not merely the pulpits and curacies of the Establish- 
ment, but all the spiritual forces at work in the land, 
—the great schools and universities, and even the 
sectarian schools and pulpits ! " 

(Later I found in Coleridge's work, entitled 
" Church and State," a complete exposition of this 
idea which Dr. Channing gave me at this time, so far 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



77 



as I was able to receive it then. It was, in short, the 
theory of the Broad Church, which the late Frederic 
Denison Maurice has developed in the '•'Kingdom 
of Christ," that was published in this country the 
year after Dr. Channing's death. And Maurice, in 
the preface to that work, intimates that he received 
from Coleridge his own initiation.) 

Our conversation now diverged upon Coleridge's in- 
tellectual history, together with that of Southey and 
Wordsworth, the extreme liberalism of whose youth 
was checked, and turned in the conservative direction, 
by the excesses of the French Eevolution, in whose ear- 
lier movements they sympathized. Dr. Channing was 
careful to say, that, though Coleridge decidedly re- 
pudiated Priestley's philosophy and the English Uni- 
tarianism, in which he was bred, he did not condemn 
Unitarians personally, but spoke of them with the 
utmost respect; and though he gloried in being of 
the Church of England, he had not suffered so much 
of a reaction as Southey, or even as Wordsworth, and 
was in bad odor in England for his liberality. 



CHAPTER VII. 



INCE closing the last chapter, I have happened 



the letters that I wrote to my friends during the years 
1825-29. These have been returned to me, and are 
fuller even than my fitful journal of details of con- 
versations with Dr. Channing ; for I was very eager 
to share with others whom I loved a privilege I so 
highly prized as this increasing intimacy. I see by 
these letters that I did not hear him preach in the 
spring of 1825. He had been already obliged to 
stop all work for that year, and was preparing to go 
to his summer rest in Rhode Island. 

I find that in the first visit I made to him, he had 
told me that some twelve years before he had a 
scheme, not unlike mine, of making a missionary ef- 
fort on the frontiers, and had had himself appointed, 
by the domestic Evangelical Missionary Society, as 
a preacher. But ill-health had deprived him of the 
possibility of beginning. He had not however been 
•excited by such a view of the subject as I had given, 
but knew in general that there must be need of a 
religious teaching of the pioneers, because that was a 
universal need to which every man was bom, and 
could in no circumstances do without. The essence 
of Christ's Revelation was that the ministry of truth 
is a universal human duty, in fact the distinctive 




treasure for my Reminiscences, in 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



79 



function of. humanity ; for we only fully realize our 
relations to God and ourselves, when we minister 
our knowledge of them to others. 

My second visit had followed a few days after the 
first, in answer to an invitation to dine that he then 
gave me ; and almost immediately the subject of con- 
versation, as I find, was the wearisome artificialness 
and the emptiness of what we call society. He 
seemed to think it was nothing bnt egotistical ambi- 
tion of display, that destroyed all frankness and sim- 
plicity. He spoke of his great and increasing desire 
to see and know his fellow-creatures. But he was 
constantly disappointed, because of the apparent in- 
ability of people to forget themselves and their own 
small ambitions in general subjects of discourse. 

I had heard so much in my early visits to Boston, 
in 1818, of the difficulty of easy intercourse with 
Dr. Channing (the greatest embarrassment being felt 
by those who desired it most), that I eagerly burst in 
on his remarks with, "Oh, Sir, you do not under- 
stand — " He looked at his wife with a sudden 
smile and said, " Is n't this delightful ? " and then 
to me with, "Well, what is it I do not under- 
stand ? " I proceeded to say that the obstacles to 
easy conversation with him were just the contrary of 
what he thought. It was sensibility to the great 
spiritual reality which the associations with his per- 
son awakened. "They are not thinking of themselves, 
but of you ; and not merely of you but of God ; 
eternity, the deepest things of spiritual life, which 
your eloquence, and a certain earnestness of manner 
that is very uncommon, have invoked from the cold 



80 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

region of abstraction into formidable reality. Prob- 
ably the most affecting passages of their own religious 
experience, which you have directly caused, are sud- 
denly present to them. Your words have in some past 
time opened the gates of heaven. They feel it an 
opportunity to enter in for a season, which they do not 
want to lose, yet feel probably that they have no 
claim on your time and strength. Self-display is just 
what they are least thinking of, while they at the 
same time crave your sympathetic aid. And all this 
is not thought out in words even to themselves ; and 
you are not aware — • " 

" You could hardly expect me to imagine all this 
effect of my presence ! Then you do not think it is 
any superstition about my office, but altogether my 
personal fault ? " 

" I think it is nobody's fault, but the misfortune of 
both, arising out of your seclusion from general society 
perhaps — " 

"Which is my misfortune, I know," said he. "But 
still I am grateful that I can by means of this seclusion 
nurse sufficient strength for a public ministry, which 
is more according to my powers. In what is called 
social tact, I know that I am organically deficient." 

He then spoke of a certain transition that society 
was experiencing — " a new moral world coming on, of 
which the Lake poets of England are still the per- 
secuted prophets." And this remark introduced the 
names of the Lake poets and his visits to them in 
England. He said he felt some disappointment in 
finding Southey had gone back so far into ecclesias- 
ticism. But Wordsworth had read to him from his 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 81 



manuscript poem the history of an individual mind 1 
to illustrate various points of his doctrine of an educat- 
ing communion with Nature, to the end of a healthy 
human development. Here he took from his book- 
shelves Wordsworth's printed works, and read to me in 
his own wonderful way many pieces : first, " The Ex- 
postulation and Reply ;" then, " It is the first mild day 
of March ;" also, " Rob Roy's Grave," " Simon Lee," 
" The Farmer of Tisbury Vale," and passages from the 
longer poems. This reading was not continuous, but 
in each instance illustrated something said about 
Wordsworth's mode of living in Nature. 

I find the following passage in a letter I wrote at 
this date : — 

a The whole effect of this conversation was like a 
stroll in the open air with a party of children. Surely, 
never was a great man less upon stilts than Dr. Chan- 
ning. He does not say what he has thought of afore- 
time and remembered; but what he is thinking now.- 
He talks, as the bird sings, to express the fulness and 
the form of his present life. I feel as if I had made 
a personal visit to Wordsworth myself. 

" It is perfectly delightful to see Dr. Channing at 
home with his wife and children. He treats children 
with the greatest consideration, and evidently enjoys 
their conversation, and studies it to see what it indi- 
cates of the yet unfallen nature. He will never tire, 
I see, of that observation of children of which I am 
so fond, and does not accuse me of bein£ visionarv 
when I tell him of my divinations. But he says, 
' This is a new chapter in the book of knowledge to 

1 This has been published since under the name of The Prelude. 

6 



82 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



me, opened since I had children of my own. I had 
no proper childhood myself. Mrs. Channing, how- 
ever, had a contrary experience, — she is my cousin 
you know, — and, from quite my early boyhood, fasci- 
nated my attention by her overflowing exuberance of 
spirits. She went to Mr. Eogers's school when I did, 
where both sexes were taught, and the girls were ex- 
empted from the severity of discipline to which the 
boys were subjected. They never were whipped. 
There was an opening in the wall of the schoolroom, 
out of which the girls would sometimes creep and 
run down the street, unknown to Mr. Eogers. This 
was a favorite pastime of hers ; and from my seat in 
school I used to see her when she would turn round 
and dance up and down, mocking at us who could 
take no such liberties, with her beautiful locks flying, 
truly "a dancing shape, an image gay," — very like 
my Mary now, only a great deal more beautiful ! 
Oh ! I have a much better understanding of the hap- 
piness of a seraph in heaven now than I had then 
of the joy that buoyed up that form ! That exemp- 
tion of the girls from harsh punishments was of most 
salutary moral effect on the boys, I think. They got 
an idea of something in woman too sacred to be pro- 
faned with a blow ; and this did something to pre- 
serve that ideal of human nature that is degraded in 
the imagination by violence offered to the person. 

"'I did not speculate about the matter then, of course. 
I think that children do not speculate, but they gen- 
eralize from impressions made. I idly acquiesced in 
what seemed a law of Nature, because it was so 
common that boys should be whipped when they 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



83 



crossed the will of the school-master, which em- 
bodied to my mind in some measure the necessity and 
obligation of the rules of the school. 

" ' When in the vacation of my college life I kept 
school in Lancaster, I was, as I now remember with 
great pain, cruelly severe-. I have none of your 
pleasant associations with school-keeping, but only 
self-reproaches. I had had too little of the joy of 
childhood to be qualified to do justice to a company 
of rollicking boys. I think I should have done much 
better if I had had a school of girls to teach, or if 
there had been any girls in the school, for I was not 
positively cruel in my disposition: I acted from a 
false abstraction of duty. The tenderness of hu- 
manity needs to be cultivated by thought, in order to 
practise it. My Calvinistic education had had its 
effect on my intellect, though my heart protested 
from the beginning against everlasting punishment, 
which I could never believe that the Author of beau- 
tiful Nature would inflict upon his hapless human 
creatures. The celestial light of happiness first 
beamed upon me when I was fifteen years old, in 
reading " Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy," which 
makes disinterested benevolence the first principle. 
It produced such a boundless flood of joy I could 
not bear it. It seemed to me I must die ; 1 vxtnted 
to die. And it was then that I endeavored to relieve 
myself by writing a letter to this lady here [he laid 
his hand on the arm of Mrs. Channing, who was sit- 
ting beside him on the sofa], and begged her to real- 
ize the immense power of the beauty of woman upon 
the will of man, and proposed that she should take 



84 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING, 



the lead in bringing her sex to realize the duty of re- 
serving its smile for virtue alone, and severely turn 
its back on the unworthy/ 

" ' Why, my dear ! ' interrupted Mrs. Channing, ' I 
never received that letter ! ' 

" c Hb, my dear,' said Dr. Channing, 'I believe I 
have it still ; I had not the presumption to send 
it. I at least felt the proper awe of the human Ideal 
embodied in woman/ he exclaimed gayly. 'But 
this/ he continued more seriously, ' was no transient 
enthusiasm with me. It is still my unwavering be- 
lief that when woman shall have faith in, and be true 
to, hfer ideal in her action, universally, — realize it to be 
the very presence of God, as it is, — she will conquer 
all the evil of the world. For men are what women 
make them/ 

"'Why then are the mass of women treated as in- 
feriors ? ' said Mrs. Channing. 'Are you not rather 
singular even in believing that thev should have their 
own property, and all the responsibility of spending it ? ' 

" ' I am afraid I am,' said he. ' My chief reason for 
recognizing their rights as property-holders is to pro- 
tect their dignity in their own eyes, and help them to 
assert their moral prerogative in all social relations ; 
feeling their moral obligation to regulate conscien- 
tiously their more lively sensibility to the beautiful, 
and their greater impulse of uncalculating, self- 
devoting love/ " 

This was also said rather gayly ; but not without 
a certain expression of earnestness. Dr. Channing 
always seemed to me to believe in the superiority 
rather than the inferiority of woman to man, in moral 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



85 



power as well as in sensibility. But lie had a very 
keen sense of the characteristic differences of the 
sexes, intrinsic as well as in their social function. I 
think Tennyson's Poem of the " Princess " quite well 
expresses his ideas on this subject. 

This conversation took place ten years before what 
is called the " Woman's Eights " movement began at 
the Convention in Worc^pter. That was a movement 
in which he always sympathized, though he regretted 
the name given to it. He had grown up in that best 
society of New England, which was so rich in noble 
and cultivated female characters, who ' had never 
failed from the days of Lady Arabella Johnson and 
Mrs. Conant ; and whose genealogy ran back to the 
days of chivalry through the higher ranks of society 
in Europe, where they had played a fairly equal part 
with men, even on the political plane. He had some- 
thing of the old knightly sentiment, but not a par- 
ticle of that cheap sentimentality about women, 
which ignores their equal responsibility with men 
for all the heroic and stern virtues that are required 
of all human beings alike. 

Dr. Channing's youth had been made immensely 
serious, not only by the fact that he found himself 
very early in life one of a large family of the sons of 
a widow not at all rich, but because the terrible 
French Kevolution at the time was enacting on the 
public plane, bringing to judgment artificial social 
customs ; while the nation to which he himself be- 
longed was struggling yet in " the disproportions of 
the unorown giant" to create a truer civilization. 
For both these reasons, he had little time for the 



86. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



fanciful play of elegant life. It was a time that tried 
both men's and women's souls. In the early day 
of his own ministry in Boston it is plain that he did 
not forget the idea that Hutcheson's "Moral Phil- 
osophy" had awakened. Among the noble women 
with whom he was intimate, there was one whose per- 
sonal life had been made so bitter by disappointed 
affection, that the reaction * 7 as a singular devotion 
of herself to the moral elevation of the whole circle of 
young people with whom she was connected by blood 
and the friendships of choice. Miss Nancy Lowell has 
left her name on some member of many of the leading 
families of Boston, and to all the legacy of a glorious 
example ; and she seemed to have foreclosed in Boston 
society the question of the equality of women to men. 
Dr. Channing in 1837 acknowledged that he was rather 
startled to learn that there remained alive on the stat- 
ute books laws which levelled women down to the grade 
of idiots and minors, whenever men w T ere brutal enough 
to take advantage of the letter of the law. Yet he 
had already in his own case, on occasion of marrying 
his wealthy cousin, expressly abrogated the law which 
gives to the husband the income of his w r ife's prop- 
erty ; for so conscientiously did he live out in his own 
person the theory of the American constitution of 
society, which declares all laws to proceed from the 
people, that he was in the habit of examining any 
laws for which he was to become personally respon- 
sible. He partook largely of a sentiment that, in 
Boston especially, has expressed itself so frequently in 
the action of fathers, who secured to their daughters 
at least the income of the property the bulk of which 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



87 



they left to tliem rather than to their sons, in the 
conviction that it was best for men to exert them- 
selves to make their own fortunes, but desirable for 
women to be pecuniarily independent. There was 
however still another motive for Dr. Channing's having 
it legally arranged that not only the principal of his 
wife's estate, but the income, should be secured to her, 
leaving him to confine his own expenditures entirely 
to his own earned salary. On one occasion when Mrs. 
Channing in my presence asked him to advise her 
with respect to some subscription she was solicited 
to make, and he gaily had replied, "No, I am happy 
to say I am not called to think of the responsibilities 
of the rich," I rather emphatically assented when she 
playfully asked me if I did not think that a wife had 
a rio;ht to her husband's counsel in all matters of 
duty ? But Dr. Channing persisted that no one 
could do another's duty, and would not hear the case, 
or know what she concluded to do ; and when she left 
the room he said to me : " In my case there are 
special reasons for not becoming a partner in my 
wife's property. I am a minister of the gospel ; and 
it is an old proverb that ministers seek to marry 
money, and are venal generally. I was so sincere in 
my vocation as to feel bound to avoid all appearance 
of evil. The minister of Christian morality must 
have clean hands, and the fact that my wife was so 
rich in this world's goods deterred me for years from 
endeavoring to win her from her luxurious home, to 
share privations and burdens which duty compelled 
me to bear." 

He did not say what had changed his mind, when 



88 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNTNG. 



they were both nearly past the meridian of life ; but I 
knew from another source that their sudden eno-a^e- 
ment was believed, by those nearest the parties, to have 
taken place, because it incidentally transpired to him 
that the reason of her always having refused to marry 
was that she preferred him. Their mutual reserve 
had been so delicate, that no friend or relative had 
ever connected their names in thought ; and yet when 
they announced their intended marriage, all wondered 
that they had not seen the signs of the life-long 
mutual reverence which was now hardly more patent. 
But whether it was pride, personal modesty, or moral 
asceticism that governed Dr. Channing, it gave way at 
once when it became the question to promote or sacri- 
'fice the happiness of another as well as of himself To 
religious asceticism Dr. Channing was not tempted, 
because he always believed that God is Love and no 
cold abstraction. To moral asceticism he was more 
liable, from his doubt of man's certain sympathy and 
from his own habitual self-disparagement. Most men 
learn to love God whom they have not seen, by the 
love of the brother whom they have seen. It was 
Dr. Channing's experience, as he related it, to derive 
his confidence and faith in men from the fact that they 
are created by the Father, w T hom he first learned to 
worship in the beauty of Xature and his own ideal of 
pure womanhood, the inmost shrine of Xature. 

And here, though it is out of date, I will speak of 
another instance of his idea of the duty of consulting 
first principles in his conduct of himself as an 
American citizen. It was some years after that a 
petition was carried to him to sign, asking Congress to 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



89 



stop all mails " on the Sabbath." I was then in the 
habit of copying for him ; and he gave me a short pe- 
tition he had drawn up, in which the word Sunday 
was substituted for " the Sabbath." When I had com- 
pleted the copy, I playfully said, — 

" I do not know as I ought to aid and abet this, for 
I do not think this petition is constitutional!' 

" Not constitutional ! " said he, " I have not even 
asked that question, for one of the very first names 

on the petition was Judge [he named one of our 

circuit judges]. I feel more confidence in his judg- 
ment on a constitutional law-point than in my own. 
I was bound to look at the petition as a Christian 
teacher, and I saw the word Sabbath ; and though I do 
not regard the day as sacramental, I think in the spirit 
of Christian liberty we have a right to preserve it from 
the increasing claims of material business for intel- 
lectual and religious enjoyment. It commemorates 
Jesus' resurrection and entrance upon the immortal 
life of the spirit. But it would not be right for me to 
use the word Sabbath!' 

" But," said I, " it will not save time but lose it, as 
I am told. If the government-mail fails the men of 
business, they will use private expresses, and em- 
ploy more men than are employed now." 

" No," said he, " Mr. 's name came the very next 

to J udge 's. He is a liberal Christian merchant, 

and his business has probably been greater than any 
other merchant's in Boston. He surely would not have 
signed the petition had he not known it would not in- 
crease work. He, still less than I, would be likely to 
reverence the Jewish Sabbath." 



90 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



I had nothing wherewith to gainsay such high 
authorities, and was silent. The petitions were sent to 
Congress, and Eeverdy Johnson, as chairman of the 
committee to which they were referred, made his great 
Eeport which disposed of the question forever, show- 
ing that it was unconstitutional for Congress to meddle 
with the mails on religious grounds, and that it would 
multiply work besides. Judge and Mr. hast- 
ened to say to all their friends that they had signed the 
petition without thinking about it at all, — almost 
without reading it ; and that they heartily concurred 
with Eeverdy Johnson, who had demonstrated that the 
only way to protect the liberty of religion was for the 
State as such to refrain from meddling with expres- 
sions of it, or to undertake to uphold it. 

When I went to see Dr. C. on the afternoon of the 
day the Eeport was published, I told him that these 
gentlemen whom he had so relied - upon were saying 
that they were heartily ashamed of what they had 
done without reflection. He was standing in the 
middle of the room when I told him this. He turned 
on me with a face of amazement, and stepping back- 
wards sat down on the sofa as if he could not stand 
the shock, exclaiming, " Without reflection ! Do Judge 

and Mr. say that without reflection they 

signed a petition to the Congress of their representa- 
tives ? When shall I sound the depth of the frivolity 
of men ! " 

I found he had just read the Eeport, and, like every- 
body else, saw the soundness of Mr. Johnson's argu- 
ments and conclusion. It was not as an act of devotion 
to God, but of humanity to the working-man, he said, 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



91 



that he had looked at the petition; and if it was to 
make more labor instead of securing leisure to him, 
he did not wish it to be granted : not certainly if it 
imperilled that principle of the Constitution which 
secures the freedom of religion by its reverent 
silence. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 



T FIXD, in my journal of October 1825, notes of 
Dr. Channing's conversation, in a long day which 
I spent with him at Mr. Eichard Sullivan's in Brook- 
line. As his family did not come up from Ehode 
Island so early as he did, he had time to make a visit 
of a week at Mr. Guild's in Brookline, where I w T as a 
daily visitor as well as at Mr. Sullivan's (for I had the 
children of both families in my school, and was in 
habits of close communion with the mothers on the 
methods of education both at home and school), and I 
think it was largely to gratify me that the little din- 
ner-party was made. For Mrs. Sullivan cordially 
sympathized with me in the pleasurable excitement 
of my increasing acquaintance with Dr. Channing. 

It is not at all uncommon for the apostles of Froe- 
bel's system of education to-day to be met by Boston 
grandmothers, who were intimate with Dr. Channing, 
with such remarks as, "But this is nothing new; 
more than fifty years ago Dr. Channing taught us to 
live with our children, and to look upon them as 
capable of the life of Christ, which is one with a 
life of love, from the beginning. Indeed he, only in 
more poetic Christian phrase than the modern scien- 
tist, declared the child to be the original man, on 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



93 



whom, as Wordsworth says, " those truths do rest, that 
we are toiling all our lives to find." 

In looking back fifty years, to those notes of my con- 
versations on the subject of education (which was the 
constant topic of our discourse, whether tete-a-tete or 
in company with others), I am struck with the fact 
that, sure enough, we were dwelling then in the dawn- 
ing light of those truths which make up the character- 
forming portion of Froebel's system, — truths which 
both Dr. Channing and F. Froebel consciously made 
use of, like Jesus Christ, to counteract the despair 
inherited from the old Pagan doctrine lurking in Ju- 
daism, and in the Orthodoxy of this day, of naked 
sovereignty as the essence of Gocl. They both af- 
firmed that the true human life is a constant growth, 
as expressed in Jesus' words : " My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work, " — a truth forever addressed 
to whomsoever is willing " to come unto [him] that 
they may have life" 

At the very time I am now speaking of (1825), 
Frederick Froebel was at Keilhau, engaged in writing 
his " Education of Mankind," which teaches what Dr. 
Channing and Miss Lowell had been teaching all 
those mothers of Boston who "had ears to hear;" 
namely, that in motherhood, conscious to itself of its 
divine vocation, and personally acted out with courage 
and faith, lies the secret of the redemption of the race 
from the accumulated evils of the past. 

I must not, however, omit to say in this connection 
that the system of Froebel comprehends in its scope 
something more than character-producing principles. 
These are the tree of life, set in the midst of the gar- 



94 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



den, by which men live forever; but the practical 
character of that life, whether it be a " bringing forth 
with pain," or in "the joy of believing," depends on 
the building of the understanding, " in the life that now 
is," according to the laws of things, — the method 
and processes of which were the special discovery of 
Froebel. Dr. Channing lacked only Froebel's iirac- 
tical genius. He had the same clear conception of 
the human beings as living and moving in the beino- 
of God, as Froebel had, but not so clear a perception 
of the immediate bearing of the truths which he, how- 
ever, acknowledged ; namely, that God forever calls 
into light all the forms of the material universe, for 
the purpose of developing thereby into self-intelligent 
individuality the divine germ that He breathes im- 
mediately out of Himself into the nostrils of every 
man ; that he may grow, conscious to himself, an 
eternal soul, divided by eternal form " from all beside n 
(as Tennyson felicitously has expressed a very pro- 
found truth). Dr. Channing saw and expressed, at 
that time, that the Word that was in the heginning, — 
that is, the symbolic meaning of Nature, — was the 
instrumentality for the development of man's charac- 
teristic faculty — Imagination. He. wanted the child 
to be awakened to Beauty, but did not look at the fact 
that the building of the understanding, by an analytic 
presentation of Nature, was the practical thing provi- 
dentially intended to limit the too great influence of 
individual men upon each other, which he seemed 
then to see no other way of counteracting than by 
bringing directly to bear upon his imagination Jesus' 
personal efforts to free the men of his own day from 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



95 



superstitious reliance upon traditions, out of which all 
life had died ; and encouraging them to trust them- 
selves to his method of an independent personal com- 
munion with the Father, and to living by "every word 
coming out of the mouth of God." A leading subject 
at the conversation at Mr. Sullivan's, on which Dr. 
Channing dwelt very emphatically, was the great 
change that he w r as conscious was taking place in 
himself now, produced by observations he had made 
in his recent visit to Europe on the phenomena of 
society there, comparing them with those presented in 
America, — the difference of decaying and growing 
institutions, both full of suggestions upon education. 
" Progress is not everything ; it is a mere change in- 
deed, and a snare, when it is divorced from the art of 
* keeping that which we are competent to gain.' " 

About twenty years before, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, 
then a young couple not twenty years of age, had 
gone to Europe to spend two or three years in France, 
Switzerland, and Italy, to complete the earnest ap- 
prenticeship to life on which they had entered before 
their marriage, under the strong influence of Miss 
Lowell, who also advised this " wandering year." 
They had come back with two children to educate, 
and immediately became parishioners of Mr. Buck- 
minster. Mrs. Guild, also, was one of the many 
young people whom Miss Lowell had helped to edu- 
cate for motherhood, as the highest vocation of human 
life, and she and her husband were members of Dr. 
Channing's church. The composition of the little 
dinner-party, therefore, was such as to make the con- 
versation of rare interest to me ; and the account of 



96 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



it, together with my comments, fill pages of my jour- 
nal, from which I must make a few extracts. 

Dr. Charming dwelt much upon the witness to hu- 
man genius made by the wonders of European art, that, 
as he said, outwent all his anticipations, both in their 
satisfying beauty and their multitudinousness. But 
nothing seemed to strike him more than " the appar- 
ent insensibility of the mass of the people to the 
masterpieces ; and the fact that, in the churches, side 
by side with these masterpieces, were the most miser- 
able modern daubs and images of the Virgin adorned 
with vulgar tinsel. Yet it was before these, rather 
than before the masterpieces, that the people would 
be seen kneeling ! " He said that " this was without 
exception during his year's observation. The revela- 
tion of the divine perfections, made by the great mas- 
ters, seemed to fall upon blind eyes, — the darkness of 
a superstitious stupidity that comprehended it not." 
He said that he had often before in his lifetime been 
struck with observing that the inhabitants of beauti- 
ful regions of Nature, unless they were educated, did 
not seem to see what was before their eyes, and how 
much more a child of the city made of an occasional 
visit to the country than the country child did of all 
the year round. This had shown him that " human 
action upon the human being must precede, and was 
infinitely more powerful than, the mere sensuous im- 
pression of Nature." Plainly, man was intentionally 
educated by man, and Nature was only subsidiary. 
"Thus far in history this law seems," he said, "to 
have proved little of a boon to any nation. Whenever, 
however, any man had discovered in his own case the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 97 

truth, that man's power over man for good or for evil 
is altogether greater than any law of material Nature, 
and had steadily acted on this conviction, making 
himself a centre of influence, he had succeeded in 
creating institutions that more often, it is true, have 
defied the will of God than co-operated with it. Yet 
the intention was not, in most cases, to defy it. 
There is scarcely an institution of human society 
that had not originally some good aim : the difficulty 
has been that the aim was so narrowed by the law- 
giver's peculiar turn of mind, that it excluded more 
of the general good than it secured. Ancient law- 
givers did not take a sufficiently generous view of 
man, and proceeded without taking into account cer- 
tain tendencies whose absolute repression necessarily 
involved irregular explosions by reaction. Jesus 
Christ was the first who proposed to begin with edu- 
cating individuals, by becoming little children with 
them who are the original elements of society freshly 
created. But the Christian Church is an institution 
by no means produced by the truth which Jesus 
Christ came to reveal. It is very largely the old 
pagan world into which Christ's divine principles fell, 
and have been all but choked ; yet they did infuse 
elements of a moral power that hitherto has had so 
much to do, to neutralize the principles of social de- 
cay, that it is but now beginning to ripen its proper 
fruit. But it is beginning ! Education to freedom of 
individual action is the Great thought of our times ! 
The innoceney of the child is a doctrine growing in 
all creeds ; and a nation is at last organized pur- 
posely to do justice to the possibilities of man ! I 

7 



98 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



come back to "America to take my part in this new 
work, with a hope in comparison with which the 
hopes of my youth were faintheartedness. Every- 
thing is crude enough around us. But everything is 
In a state of fluidity, in great contrast to the petrified 
condition of the Old World. I do see a portentous 
degree of the carelessness, folly, and rashness of the 
growing boy in our nationality ; but it is even refresh- 
ing when compared with the drooling dementia of 
second childhood ! I took pains, whenever it was pos- 
sible, to make observation of the people of Europe on 
the gala days of the Church, when they assembled to 
take part in the ceremonies and receive the ' Commun- 
ion.' They could be seen amusing themselves, while 
waiting for their turn, in all sorts of games of chance 
gotten up by those whose aim was to make a penny. 
The efficacy of the wafer for salvation seemed to con- 
sist in an idle notion that if the bread, which they be- 
lieved to be the real body of Christ, became a part of 
their human bodies, they could not be consumed by the 
fires of hell ; though it would not save them entirely 
from those of purgatory. And all their religious ac- 
tivity seemed to consist in doing things that would 
cut short the purgatorial fires. There seemed not a 
pulsation of moral life in their religion. On one oc- 
casion," said he, " I was present at a ' Function,' in 
which a company of priests were engaged in doing 
homage before a picture of the Madonna. There were 
some fine-looking, intellectual heads among them, and 
I watched their countenances to divine, if I might, 
what this homage to Mary was. They all took hold 
of hands, making a circle, and were expressing sym- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANN1NG. 



99 



bolically a very sublime idea, when the whole effect 
was destroyed for me by seeing one of them most 
intently engaged in contriving, in the midst of the 
solemnities, to get a pinch of snuff! 

" I must sajr I was somewhat disappointed in finding 
the Eoman Catholic worship such a moral inanity; 
for I knew and loved Cheverus. 1 But even this great 
despotism has not been able quite to destroy man. 
The empty form is confronted on the one hand with a 
rampant infidelity, that is made vital by the dignity 
of human nature, which it crudely affirms ; and there 
are on the other hand devout souls who are in ear- 
nest, — who throw themselves into brotherhoods and 
sisterhoods of Charity, which are like the. vines by 
which Nature adorns with her irrepressible beauty 
the ruins that human violence and its own disorders 
have caused. Human depravity is an irrefragable 
fact; but, in the long run, Divine goodness is the 
conqueror. The desideratum is that God and man 
should work together from first to last. When Jesus 
says, ' The Father giveth the Son to have life in him- 
self/ and ' My Father worketh hitherto, and I work/ 
we should understand him as prophesying the future 
of the human race, of which his life on earth is the 

type." 

" Shall we ever work miracles ? " said Mr. Sullivan. 
" Jesus," replied Dr. Channing, " when he was work- 
ing miracles said, ' Greater works than these shall ye 
do.' We are beginning to speak of the miracles of 

1 This was a Roman Catholic Bishop who worked in Boston in 
the early part of the century, and was regarded as another Fenelon 
by all who knew him. 



100 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



science; but every heroic act that has deliberately 
defied death, every hero and saint who have died for 
a principle, have done miracles, — that is, have given 
sign that the law of the soul is higher than self- 
preservation, the highest law of the body." 

There came in here a good deal of talk about in- 
temperance. Dr. Channing thought the common want 
of conscience with respect to the laws of the body 
was one of the direct results of the Puritan contempt 
for man as man. The body was not cherished as the 
temple of the Holy Spirit. " Nothing was more strik- 
ing in Jesus than his tenderness for the body. He 
never spoke of it as the cause of sin; he always 
healed its diseases. There was not the least asceticism 
about him. It was one cause of reproach to him that 
he honored the social meal even in the houses of 
sinners. His first recorded wondersign (as Luther so 
ftappily translated the word w r e render miracle, and 
arbitrarily define to be a violation of the laws of 
Nature, which are the law r s of God) was to bless a 
wedding festivity and heighten its pleasures, even its 
pleasures of sense. The wide-spread intemperance of 
New England is a signal judgment on the Puritan 
attempt to banish amusement from human life. The 
best mode of action for the Temperance Societies 
would be to multiply innocent public amusements ; 
to teach music in all the common schools ; to have 
public festivals in which old and young should join 
in the sports ; to open picture galleries, and to induce 
the more favored classes to make loans of their works 
of art for the inspection of the public. But it would 
be more potent still, to encourage universal cultiva- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



101 



tion of the fine arts. The eye to see beauty is devel- 
oped by nothing less than making beauty. The his- 
tory of art shows that its highest phases are those in 
which the great works are done, not by imitation of 
models, but to embody original imagination. The 
first era of art is the grand era." 

Mr. Guild said that the first thing to be done for 
temperance was to close the grog-shops at every cor- 
ner, which tempted the tired workman to a cheap 
- oblivion of his fatigues. Dr. Charming said perhaps 
he had too little faith in the efficacy of mere ab- 
sence of temptation. The craving for excitement was 
a great indication, and must be satisfied in some way 
by legitimate enjoyment. The true measure for the 
Temperance Society was to supply innocent food for 
the innocent human appetites ; and the best recrea- 
tion for the overworked, in one way, was other work, 
satisfactory to the imagination. " Imagination is the 
characteristic human faculty. Think of the meaning 
of the word Recreation. Imagination is the play-prin- 
ciple, a faculty that cannot be destroyed, and must 
have for its material cheering and elevating objects 
as well as social, or it will intensify degradation." 

There was a great deal more said on this subject of 
temperance ; and I was amazed to hear what had 
been the intemperate habits of even the "good society " 
of Boston within the memory of these people ; what 
arrangements used to be made at the gentlemen's 
dinner-parties, in the best houses, for the drunkenness 
of the guests, which it was always presupposed was 
to take place. 

I do not exactly know how we came to speak of 



102 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



cookery, but it was in relation to the religions man- 
agement of the body. Dr. Channing said any one who 
would teach how to make bread and cook potatoes 
well would be a public benefactor ; and told of a lady 
of his acquaintance, who on a journey tasted some 
very nice bread, a thing so difficult for an invalid to 
get made fit for eating. She went to the baker and 
bought permission to stay all night in the bakery and 
see it made; and ever afterwards made with her 
own hands the very best bread for her family and # 
invalid friends. He turned to me and said, " Cannot 
you introduce this subject to your young lady pupils, 
and win them to think of this very important matter ? 
Cannot you make the cook's oracle a classic ? Might 
not cooking come in as a branch of chemistry ? " (Of 
late, when we have had in Boston cooking classes and 
cooking clubs, — and now when there are cooking 
schools organized in our chief cities, and at the South 
Kensington museum in London, — I recur to this con- 
versation.) Some one remarked, when speaking of 
boiling potatoes, that a foreigner, whom he named, had 
said there was no water in America fit to boil potatoes 
in. Dr. Channing said that in boiling potatoes with 
steam, the deleterious effects of any water would be re- 
medied. A good deal was said of the water of various 
parts of the United States, and its consequence of fosteiv 
ing intemperance, because ardent spirits corrected the 
bad taste and was thought to neutralize the bad ele- 
ments. Improved agricultural science was to be looked 
to ; and he asked what was being done for this educa- 
tional interest, which had such bearing on the health, 
and through that on the morals, of the country ? 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CIIANNING. 



103 



Dr. Channing talked as if the morals of the country 
were dependent on us all, who were citizens of a nation 
in which sovereignty inhered in the people. This is 
patriotism of the true pattern, such as Moses sug- 
gested, in referring all public calamities to some sin 
of omission or commission of perhaps but one citizen. 

In discussing the question of temperance, a great 
deal was said of the elevating effect of the Sunday- 
evening conversation parties at Mr. Buckminster's 
and of the increasing influence of women on society, 
which tends to banish drunkenness. They spoke es- 
pecially of the influence upon the upper circles of 
Boston society that had been exerted by the morning 
classes for learning to draw, and the delightful evening 
gatherings of young ladies and gentlemen in Miss 
Lowell's parlors. "They were too exclusive," Dr. 
Channing said ; " but a liberal and reasonable religious 
tone has gone forth from them, and already done so 
much that much more is to be expected from the 
wider diffusion of this refined social culture. Social 
progress would not give us superior persons, probably, 
to those of the past, but make superior persons the rule 
instead of the exception. Society needs to make pro- 
gress horizontally as it were. This world would be 
heaven to all intents and purposes, if all men were as 
beautiful, wise, and good as some who have already lived. 
There is no conception of heaven more attractive than 
St. Paul's 'communion of the just made perfect.' Per- 
fection does not imply but excludes uniformity. If 
everyone obeyed the will of God revealed to himself, 
no two would be alike. It is one reason why the idea 
of immortality does not excite the will more power- 



104 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



fully, that we have had so narrow and poor a concep- 
tion of the variety and extent of the powers of hu- 
man nature. The variety of the universe of matter 
is a faint symbol of the variety of heaven." He said 
" the principle of exclusiveness keeps society unin- 
teresting." He spoke of the sudden animation pro- 
duced in the upper circles of society in Scotland when 
Eobert Burns, the Ayrshire peasant, suddenly broke 
in upon its tameness. He expressed his wonder 
at people's patience with the life of fashionable 
etiquette. " What could be the pleasure of dressing 
up in magnificent garments, and going into large 
assemblies to bow and say a few empty words to the 
very people we left, some hours before, in simple 
dress, speaking naturally on subjects that really inter- 
ested them? Plain living and high thinking belong 
together. Expensive costume must needs narrow 
society to the few affluent. Fashion was benumbing 
to life ; it was quite a modern fairy with its wand of 
transformation. The beauty of Grecian dress was 
above the reach of her transforming wand, which in 
fact ignores beauty for novelty; and old fashion is a 
synonym for ugliness. The changes of fashion come, 
perhaps, because the blind instinct for beauty is not 
satisfied; and so we ever make new experiments." 

It was a marvel to him how a fashion originated. 
Mr. Sullivan here playfully sketched the genesis and 
history of a fashion, which had its origin in something 
rather lower than even a blind instinct of beauty. 
Some tailor, for instance, in London or Paris, in- 
vented a form for a cape, to gratify some great duke 
with a distinguishing dress. He then told his cus- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



105 



tomers that this great duke wore it, and they desired 
to be classed with him ; and so it started on its way, 
till it reached the lower ranks, which disgraced it, and 
suggested to another tailor another change as the sign 
of rank. " And so," said the Doctor, " there was no 
conspiracy in the first place? How amusing to think 
that the self-interest of some obscure mechanic can 
set the civilized world in motion ! But even fashion 
is a proof of the inextricable relations of men to each 
other.. What is desirable is, that these extensive 
social movements should be foreseen and planned in 
harmony with ideas instead of egotistical caprices. 
Then, instead of our social relations dragging us back 
from the ideal, they would conspire to raise us to it." 
He pronounced " balls, which almost turned families 
out of their houses to obtain room for the crowds 
invited, immoral" He did not object to amusement, 
but he wanted it to he amusement, not toil and wea- 
riness to many, for the sake of displaying the vanity 
of a few. Such kind of visiting put an end to all 
rational intercourse, all meeting for exchange of senti- 
ments that make us love each other more, — which he 
thought was the only social enjoyment. He did not 
want to discourage the seeking of beauty in dress or 
environment, but that need not involve such expense. 
Nothing was cheaper than beauty, Nature showering 
it upon us. No upholstery can rival the flowers and 
evergreens that are within reach of the poorest. The 
desire for ornamenting life is legitimate, and marks 
the first movements of self-respect in the poor, who 
should neither be discouraged nor tempted by the 
extravagance of the rich. 



106 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



Mere neatness was hardly excitement enough to the 
imagination. A well-dressed man was not so likely 
to act brutally. Advance out of filth is a step that 
raises men in the intellectual scale ; and fashion, per- 
haps, was a help to them. It insured some question 
of fitness ; and he laughed heartily at Mr. Sullivan's 
suggestion of the grotesqueness of an assembly of 
people, all dressed according to their own indivi- 
duality of taste. " The love of ornament needed 
education, and should minister to the taste for real 
beauty, which is accessible to all. The classes favored 
by fortune had a great duty in this respect. He 
would have them call out genius of a higher order 
than that of the milliner, mantuamaker, or uphol- 
sterer. Wherever the fine arts had been developed 
to the utmost, they had been devoted to signalize 
what was public, not private, — great social deeds or 
religious ideas." 

Some one remarked that " multitudes would be 
thrown out of work, were the innumerable trifles of 
fashionable life given up." He replied, " Yes ; Marie 
Antoinette's thoughtless change from French silk to 
muslins took the bread out of the mouths of the silk- 
weavers of France, and was noted as one of the 
causes of the great crash of the French Eevolution. 
But changes produced by reason and taste would be 
too gradual to produce catastrophes. Change was a 
law of all finite things. We could not hinder it ; but 
it was for us to give it the right direction, and its 
motive should be the equalizing and universalizing 
of enjoyments. What he objected to in present ten- 
dencies was, that separation of the classes of society 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 107 

which seemed to be growing among us. He wished 
we could preserve more of the old equality of New 
England society. I love the motto, ' God preserve 
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.' I would have 
it make progress in refinement and beauty, as well 
as in wealth, continually putting more and more in 
common. We too much ape the customs of the Old 
World, which grew out of another principle than that 
which stands at the head of our Declaration of In- 
dependence. There would be more great artists, if 
there was more demand for them. The money paid 
to the artist circulates. He has his family which 
must be fed and clothed, employing people to culti- 
vate the ground, to weave, and to traverse the earth 
and seas to exchange the commodities which are 
peculiar to different climates ; and this brings varie- 
ties of the human race together, to put in common 
the various bounty of the common Father to the 
various types of the human family, whose mutual 
intercourse enhances human enjoyment, — for the 
greatest enjoyment is, after all, in knowing each 
other. The more variety in our sympathy, the more 
we are enlarged, — the less liable to the weakness of 
selfishness, and the more lifted away from meanness. 
The very word generosity \ and the emotion it awakens, 
is an evidence of the truth of Christianity. Christ 
lived for the race, and calls us to do so in all our 
social relations. In proportion as we are generous, 
we are ' hidden ' in Christ." 

We talked of the Quakers. Their religion natu- 
rally grew under Democratic institutions. It denied 
the divine right of all aristocracy, and had cast the 



108 



REMINISCENCES OE DE. CHANNING. 



principle out of their Church, more than even Con- 
gregationalism had done. The inner light, though 
they called it the " light of Christ/' they divested of 
the personality of Jesus. Hence it tended to vanish 
into an abstraction. But just now there was a schism 
in the old Quaker body made by Elias Hicks, who 
was vivifying George Fox's doctrine of the inner 
light. I asked Dr. Charming if the inner light of the 
Quakers was anything else than the light of Reason ? 
Was not that the light that lighteth every man who 
cometh into the world ? " I think," said he, " that 
they mean something more than we mean, when in 
ordinary parlance we speak of Eeason. They mean 
the Eternal Eeason, which is one with Love, — the 
Love to which we owe our beino- and which sustains it. 

o 

The strength of Quakerism comes from cultivating 
their sensibility as individuals to the immediate ac- 
tion of God's Love ; and at the time of the devel- 
opment of the sect, before they had a past history to 
lean upon, they exhibited the power which sponta- 
neous faith gave to the first disciples of Christ; and 
so they created a Church which Elias Hicks is now 
re-creating, — for he protests against idly reclining 
upon the 1 testimonies of the fathers' and their special 
forms of discipline, and especially w T ith resting satis- 
fied with their sacrifices. He would have the people 
make an aggressive movement upon slavery by new 
sacrifices ; and they having grown conservative by 
material prosperity impugn his creed, calling him 
Unitarian, in order to diminish his influence. But 
he does not know what they mean. He has the 
simplicity of old George Fox, in his reliance on the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



109 



inner guide. In the Middle States, everywhere ex- 
cept in New England, where the sect is most given 
over to tradition, the bulk of the Quakers find Hicks's 
voice to be that of the true Shepherd ; and in the 
divisions of the Quaker societies the larger assemblies 
are found to be Hicksites, though they repudiate the 
name, and he disclaims the role of leader. (Dr. Chan- 
nmg said he had heard Hicks preach.) " The Quaker 
is wrong," he said, " in neglecting the revelation made 
through Nature to the human reason. He worships 
God with his heart and might, but not with his mind, 
and banns the spontaneity of the intellect in art as 
ruthlessly as the carnal appetites. But in social mo- 
rality, within the limited sphere of those who see with 
them, the Quakers have done nobly. The essential 
equality of man and woman is recognized within their 
own borders, and the co-operative principle of society 
acknowledged to a great degree. They take care of 
their poor without degrading them ; evincing the 
greatest delicacy in cherishing the self-respect of 
those they help, by acknowledging their equal pre- 
rogative of voicing 'the word of the Lord' to their 
fellows, which keeps up the sense of men being one 
family." 

It w T as remarked that the Quaker Pharisee was the 
most contemptuous of men. This looking inward did 
not always reach to the depth where all men are one. 
It was very difficult for a Quaker to see that a paid 
clergyman w T as not necessarily a hireling ; and they 
did not realize that their peculiar garb and peculiar 
grammatical idiom had come to be as complete ec- 
clesiastical formalities as the ceremonies of other 



110 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



churches, and are no longer to be accounted as signs 
of spiritual freedom. 

" Yes," he continued, " they suffer from the old 
dogma of the depravity of human nature ; they do not 
reverence the spontaneity of the intellect and imagi- 
nation as immediate gifts of God no less than con- 
science. This arose at first from the circumstance that 
they came forth at a time when the imaginative arts 
were excessively corrupted, and the intellect sophisti- 
cated ; and both were pandering to the low condition 
of morality that so overwhelmed conscience in the 
reigns of Charles II. and James II." 

In my notes of this conversation, being only intent 
on recording what Dr. Channin^ said, I have left out 
all the connecting links and graceful turns which 
took from it all formality, and made it an inter- 
change of thoughts suggested at the moment. He 
did not orate, but told anecdotes to which the 
above remarks were incidental. When speaking of 
temperance, he showed a great deal of delicate be- 
nevolence and not the least Phariseeism, telling anec- 
dotes to illustrate the fact that intemperance becomes 
a disease of the body very soon, which must be 
treated by those who would aid the sufferer, whether 
by administering physical or moral antidotes. He 
said the "immediate cause of excessive seeking 01 
stimulants is a sense of physical sinking, often pro- 
duced by extreme moral and intellectual excitement ; 
but not amenable entirely to intellect or will. Is 
not the neglect of physical education remarkable in 
this country among the higher classes, who are not 
drawn to physical exertion by the necessity of getting 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. Ill 

a living? No other country in the same favorable 
circumstances of climate shows so many instances 
of puny, half-formed men. Might not the prevalence 
of stoves, as a means of heating schoolrooms, be in- 
juring the constitution of children at school ? " He 
told of a woman of his acquaintance, virtuous and 
religious, who seemed to have inherited intemperance 
from a dissipated father. She saw and dreaded its 
approach; but her efforts to resist it seemed over- 
powered by the strong physical impulse. After de- 
tailing the particulars, he said, with a great deal of 
feeling, " I could not condemn her ! " He spoke of 
another case, — a man he knew in respectable society, 
discharging the duties of the various relations of life 
with fidelity, apparently full of moral and religious 
principle, who seemed desirous to work on his own 
mind to prevent this habit, and entreated his minister 
to help him ; " yet he has these seasons like fits of in- 
sanity." He spoke of another man on whom this 
habit crept, and in whom it was arrested (as he had 
told him) by the strong representations made to him 
of its ruining his most interesting social relations, 
and of his duty to God. This man was of a high 
order of intelligence, and he had said that the images 
of horror conjured up by the representations of hell 
that were made to him still thronged his mind so 
pertinaciously as to injure its spring, and overwhelm 
it with a gloom that did not belong to it originally. 
" I fear this may drag him down again. I dread the 
loss of animal spirits. We must take imagination 
to work on the will of those whom we should re- 
buke tenderly, and not rob them of their self-respect. 



112 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



There is no means of virtue so sure as to be re- 
minded that we all have with us the pure spirit of 
God working to redeem us, if we will only do our 
part. Faith in ourselves is real faith in God. We 
too often quench it, instead of calling it forth, by our 
ministerial exhortations." He said he had been 
" asked to preach a sermon on Intemperance, and 
wished to call out thought on the subject; for he 
w r ould avoid mere declamation." In this relation he 
spoke of the great difference of Christ's preaching 
from the prevalent exhortation. It always seemed to 
aim at waking up the power of self-direction. " Why 
do not ye of your own selves judge what is right?" 
" Go, and sin no more! 1 When Jesus healed diseases 
by his often repeated words " Thy sins are forgiven 
thee," he recognized that diseases were the immediate 
or inherited results of moral disorder. To touch the 
springs of moral power we must awaken hope. It is 
much more important to convince our audience of 
the good that is latent than of the sins which are 
discouragingly patent. 

It was delicious to me to hear him sav these things. 
They did not sound new, though I think I never had 
heard anybody say them; but my own experience did 
entirely respond. I know that the rebuke that has 
ever done me most good has been couched in 'praise, 
though I knew it to be undeserved. I said, " How often 
it seems as if we never had understood Christianity 
before ! " He turned quickly, looked at me with a 
flashing smile, and said, " Oh yes, how often ! " and I 
felt that we recognized each other at this moment. 
When we were speaking on the subject of dress, he 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 113 



made a suggestion which I think quite worth remem- 
bering He said he wondered why the Americans, 
who were such great travellers, had not thought of hav- 
ing' a traveller's costume that would be considered in 
order in all assemblies. It would save the trouble of 
a great deal of luggage. To ladies it would be an im- 
mense convenience. Eliza Sullivan asked, " Would it 
not make one too conspicuous ? " He said, " Oh no, it 
would be so common if it were once adopted, that it 
would imply no eccentricity. It would have another 
advantage ; it would aid hospitality by pointing out 
the stranger who is to be especially attended to." 

He spoke a good deal of children, — how much more 
he enjoyed in sympathy with his children than he 
had his own childhood, which was in his remem- 
brance a season of perplexity and unsatisfied want. 
He was indeed not a healthy child, — a victim of 
dyspepsia. He asked if we thought children were gen- 
erally happy. Mr. Sullivan combated this doubt of 
the happiness of children; spoke of their enjoyment 
in getting knowledge. Dr. Channing said that en- 
joyment belonged to no age ; it increased with age. 
Children were very exacting, and certainly were sub- 
jects for education. But the common management 
and domination of children was the opposite of edu- 
cation. It ignored the child's consciousness, instead 
of drawing it out and making it understand itself, to 
the end of giving it the clew of ^(/"-direction. We 
talked of Rousseau and Pestalozzi, Miss Edgeworth, 
Bell, and Lancaster. He thought the science of edu- 
cation was yet to be discovered ; that is, such an edu- 
cation as should be the basis of Christian culture. 

8 



114 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



He had a charming visit in England, he said, not only 
among the Unitarians and the Lake poets, but some- 
what among the nobility ; and spoke of the freedom 
with which the English conversed on politics. In 
an interview he had with Lord Erskine, he was sur- 
prised by his remark, " Monarchy must go down ! " 

He said, recurring to American politics, that he had 
" never heard Webster, but had just read his Bunker 
Hill address, and supposed everybody must have been 
disappointed in it. Edward Everett would have 
produced a greater effect on such an occasion. His 
Phi Beta oration of 1824 was touching, thrilling, 
kindling, and had some profound thought in it ; but 
Everett's manner was very disagreeable, and destroyed 
the effect on himself. He preferred to read his elo- 
quence. He went, he said, to hear the Christmas ser- 
mon that was so famous, but was perfectly unmoved 
and cold under it ; and when it was over, he avoided 
speaking to any one, lest the communication of a 
common disappointment should increase it. Never 
was he more surprised than at the general burst of 
admiration. In discussing the probabilities of Ever- 
ett's success in Congress, Mr. Guild thought he would 
not succeed. Mr. Sullivan thought he would. Dr. 
Channing said there was no predicting what a man 
ot genius would do, and spoke of his attainments 
with wonder, as miraculous. 

Soon after, when speaking of the aged chaplain of 
Bunker Hill battle, who had made the prayer on the 
fiftieth anniversary, and had to be borne from the 
field faint with excitement, he spoke of having seen 
him at the first Conference of the Unitarians after 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



115 



the Congregational separation ; and said that the old 
man, in telling of the revivalistic developments in 
his neighborhood, said, " And what do you think is 
their charge against me ? That I am a moral man ! 
A moral man ! I rejoice in the charge, — I rejoice in 
the charge ! " Dr. Channing repeated these words with 
great gusto, more than once. 



CHAPTER IX. 



TT was in the fall of 1825 that I had the happiness 
of hearing Dr. Channing preach, after four years 
interval. The first sermons I heard were those two 
noble ones upon Self-Denial, published in the fourth 
volume of his complete works ; and in comparing my 
notes of them in my journal with the printed ones, I am 
glad to see my accuracy, for it gives me confidence in 
my memory of others recorded in my letters to friends. 
There was a third sermon on Self-Denial which was 
quite as interesting, if not more so, than those pub- 
lished ; and I suppose it was not printed, precisely 
because it went into that depth of devout feeling to 
which he always doubted his power to do justice in 
words. The question of this third discourse was, what 
are the highest motives to self-denial, even beyond 
that of obtaining moral power ? which he had made 
the question of his second discourse. He made this 
highest motive to be the full enjoyment of our spir- 
itual being, ] which could only be perfectly sponta- 
neous when the temptations of the passions, both 
sensual and intellectual, were entirely neutralized, and 
the sense of duty was lost in great impulses of love, 
which is the full communion with the spirit of the 
Lord, which is liberty. 1 This realization of the soul's 

1 Mr. Henry James's late work has for its chief object to bring 
out this height of spirituality as the ultimate state of humanity. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 117 



proper spontaneity is, he said, the ultimate conse- 
quence of all exertions to obtain moral power, by 
making sense and intellect and aesthetic taste our 
servants. This daylight of Eeason, this sense of 
communion as absolute partaking of the divine na- 
ture, he described with a calm sublimity, which 
proved that he himself dwelt in it and was completely 
redeemed from the bondage of sin and death. One 
could understand why he should say that we should 
value self-denial as the most precious command of 
Christ, the gift of a "guard angelic," to preserve the 
jewel of the soul in its divine simplicity and power. 

"He administered the Communion after the ser- 
mon/' as I say in my journal, " more affectingly than 
I ever saw any one do. His manner is unique, his 
voice exactly the same as in interesting conversation 
with his friends. He exhorted us to come without 
undue awe, but tenderly alive to the blessing of being 
companions of Jesus Christ in the family of God. 
He said he thought there was too often an unhealthy 
excitement in the minds of the communicants, a mor- 
bid sensibility cultivated ; but this occasion was to 
all intents and purposes a festival. Jesus, on leaving 
the earth, did not leave his natural yearning for friend- 
ship : he wanted his disciples to remember him as a 
man eating and drinking with them. He meets us 
here now as a friend, to commune with us upon the 
divine meaning of our human relation with each other 
and with him. It is, indeed, a public profession of 
our faith in Christ's revelation that all men are of 
one family with saints and angels in heaven ; and we 
should seriously ask ourselves whether we live in con- 



118 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



sistency with this faith, whether we are walking 
according to his commandments in his spirit, 
whether we are making progress. If we find on 
reasonable self-examination that we are not making 
progress, not becoming more and more conscious of 
our immortality, he would not say go away, " but begin 
to-day to go forward into more and more beneficent 
action upon those around you, opening your hearts 
more and more to the inspiration of noble examples, 
and especially of his who shed his blood, not to 
condemn, but to save all men from that separation 
from each other and our Father which is sin." 

He recurred to the original scene, and made it start- 
lingly real and inexpressibly sweet, repeating Jesus' 
words of consolation ; and at last held out the cup 
and plate of bread with a smile of sympathetic ten- 
derness, that seemed ocular demonstration of his as- 
sertion that " there is a soul within us all brilliant with 
the immortal life, which a perpetual reasonable self- 
denial sets free." But everything was simple and 
natural. He did not seem to be stretching up into 
another world, but the world beyond sense seemed to 
have descended. I never saw him look so beautiful. 
His resemblance to an old painting of the Saviour that 
I had seen struck me so forcibly that it called up the 
recollection of the many times in which I had heard 
this resemblance spoken of by others. How real and 
human Dr. Channing makes the divine Jesus ! how 
divine the humanity he declares to be ours as well as 
his, " if we will only believe it." 

It was a coincidence that at dinner at Eliza Cabot's 
that day, the resemblance of Dr. Channing in counte- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 119 



nance to Jesus Christ was a topic of discourse. It was 
suggested that perhaps Jesus did not mean to establish 
a festival, but that this had grown up naturally. Per- 
haps he only wanted to suggest that his personal 
disciples should always think of him at meal-times, 
and not forget in his exaltation the community he 
shared with their infirm nature. Were we to gener- 
alize the supper in this wise, would it not prevent all 
intemperance, and that separation of the human from 
the heavenly life, which now makes the latter so un- 
real and sanctimonious ? 

The week before this Sunday I had met Dr. Chan- 
ning at Mrs. Susan Channing's, and he spoke of his 
rest in the summer. " I have been perfectly idle/' 
said he. " It took some time for the top to get asleep, 
as the boys say." We spoke of Tucker's " Light of 
Nature Pursued," and of the ethical part of Brown's 
philosophy. He said Tucker had " written a delightful 
book, but he does not seem to have known anything of 
the mightier passions and energies of man; not so much 
as Brown, whose Ethics are very interesting, though 
of course I do not acquiesce in Brown's nonentity of 
moral power. His metaphysics do not support his eth- 
ics. He implied in the latter what he did not state in 
the former. He felt more truth than he saw and stated." 

I was so much disturbed by this condemnation of 
Brown's philosophy that I went to see him the next 
Saturday, and told him, with much confusion of face, 
that I wanted him to prove his words ; for of course, 
in my vocation as teacher, it was of paramount im- 
portance that my intellectual and moral philosophy 
should be true, or I might do infinite mischief to the 



120 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

children committed to my care for development and 
education, — and I had thought Brown was all right. 
With a countenance that absolutely flashed with cor- 
dial sympathy, and taking my hand with the great- 
est tenderness of manner, he drew me down into 
a seat beside him on the sofa, and said : " I am very 
much gratified that you should come to me so frankly 
and earnestly on such a subject. No education of 
children can be adequate, unless their nature is care- 
fully studied and reverently dealt with. I am very 
glad that you are impressed with this great truth, 
for unfortunately there is prevalent the practical 
error — and often it is theoretical also — that children 
are mere blank paper to be written upon, or plastic 
material to be moulded at the will of the teacher, 
who does not see that the child is a prodigious living 
force, which is to learn to understand itself as a free 
agent, and to govern itself by knowledge of the truth, 
which it is the office of the teacher to present in such 
a manner as to interest all the energies of heart and 
mind to apprehend and enact it. The ethical part of 
Brown's philosophy is valuable I think, and I do not 
wonder that it has seized your imagination ; but he 
rests it on an essentially infirm foundation, as it seems 
to me. What do you understand his metaphysical 
system to be ? " 

As I was quite dumb, and distressed with a sense of 
inability to answer this large and searching question, 
he soon went on to break it up, and asked : " By 
sinking cause in mere antecedence does he not deny 
moral responsibility to begin with ? By making the 
consciousness a mere chain of images and emotions, 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 121 

does he not make men the creatures of circumstance 
merely ? Does he not entirely beg the question of 
cause ? Cause is not among the phenomena of ma- 
terial nature, which are external to the soul of man ; 
but we know there is cause because we are causes 
ourselves. If we never did that which we are con- 
scious we could refrain from doing, we would have no 
idea of cause immediate or the Primal cause. Only 
as we exert ourselves to do what is against our inclina- 
tion do we realize that we ourselves are above Nature, 
supernatural, and develop the organ of the knowledge 
of God. Brown's favorite word Emotion is a very 
inadequate name for the passion in which are the 
moving springs of human life ; and image, which is 
Brown's and Locke's definition of idea, is no adequate 
name for the insights of principle which are deeper 
than all phenomena, and . often in seeming contra- 
diction to phenomena. In representing Power as an 
illusion, Brown takes away from human life that 
sense of responsibility which can be felt by no being 
whose consciousness includes nothing but images of 
outward nature and mere emotions." I replied that I 
did not so understand Brown. Certainly he did, in 
so many words, recognize the sense of ideality as 
a " rock in our nature, ever rising above the sea of 
circumstance, and against which the waves of emo- 
tion were dashed to be broken ; " and he certainly 
affirmed God as a power beyond circumstances, who 
occasionally interposed, and always held in his hand 
the chain of phenomena of which the identical self' 
was the subject. " I know," said he, " that he makes 
these admissions ; but they entirely contradict his 



122 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



whole metaphysical statement. Brown was a man, 
and an honest one, — a finely touched spirit. And he 
betrays a depth of personal consciousness for which 
his system makes no room. The corresponding ideas 
of God and personal identity are neither images nor 
emotions, but a fountain of Power in the depths of 
our souls, before which " the heavens and the earth flee 
away," as Brown himself unconsciously recognizes 
in his admissions of identity. Inconsistency is not 
unfrequent in authors. The errors of every philoso- 
phy may be refuted out of the philosopher's own ad- 
missions, when he is honest and good, as Brown evi- 
dently was. You know," said he, " that these lectures 
of his were his very first studies. At the early age of 
twenty-four he was called to the chair of Philosophy, 
unexpectedly vacated ; and having studied medicine, 
which he was already practising, he could have had too 
little time to have digested the instruction which he 
had had from the Scotch School, and a reading so 
voluminous that we must not wonder if it was super- 
ficial. He lectured two or three times a week, and 
has given us the first outlooks and generalizations of 
a young, inexperienced mind. Immediately he died, 
and his unrevised manuscripts were printed. The 
book is a wonderful one for a maiden effort, and gave 
a great promise. We must not wonder if its system 
of metaphysics is as superficial as his sketches of the 
systems of philosophy, which were the result of whole 
„ lifetimes of thought, and to not one of which has he 
done justice, though he has made many keen and 
justifiable criticisms. Especially in the ethical part 
he has interpersed insights of his own, for which he 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 123 



gives no logical justification, and which are above 
logical proof from the premises from which he starts ; 
namely, c the laws of physical inquiry.' " 

He then asked me what philosophy I had previ- 
ously read. I told him that when I was quite young 
I had read Eeid and Stuart, Allison on " Taste," 
and only recently these volumes of Brown; and it 
was now very plain to me that I had poured my own 
ideas into Brown's formulas. 

" This," he said, " is generally the case with young 
readers. You have thought Brown said all that your 
mind associated with his words. It is an art that 
we have to learn, to discriminate in the web of 
our thought what we bring and what the author 
suggests." 

Here he asked me some questions about the origin 
of my own ideas of Education, which led me to speak 
of what in the early days of my life I had myself 
been conscious of desiring from others, who never 
seemed to me to answer my questions or to ask me 
the right ones. I then told him of my first concep- 
tion of God, which, on my being asked abruptly by a 
careless person, " Who made you ? " embodied itself 
spontaneously in a genial human face, so vivid that 
to this day it appears before me with a distinctness 
that would admit of portraiture ; and also how infi- 
nitely inferior to this intuition was the impression 
made by some dogmatic instruction simultaneously 
given, with some experiences of like discrepancy be- 
tween my own spontaneous morality and that incul- 
cated, in very good intention, by those about me ; but 
which seemed to go entirely upon the theory that a 



124 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHINNING. 



child was nothing but an instinct of selfishness, al- 
though I felt mvself to be rather the instinct of love 
finding its satisfaction in the love and beauty of others. 
This led to many anecdotes of children, as I had ob- 
served them in my own school, in which he evinced 
the greatest interest ; and at length he said: "From all 
you have told me, I am led to think that your own 
observation has taught you a better philosophy than 
books. The book of Nature and the soul are the ulti- 
mate standards, especially when the latter is studied in 
the perfect manifestation made by Christ, so perfect an 
image of God as to have been confounded with Him • 
the misfortune of which is that it is not seen that the 
redeeming power that distinguished him was the con- 
sequence of his never having fallen from the faith 
and vision of .the Father, possible to every soul. It 
seems to me that he himself asserted that he had a 
conscious pre-existence with the Father, and I feel that 
it is a needed revelation to man that the spiritual 
world within the veil sympathizes with those who are 
out in the darkness caused by ages of sin ; and that it 
gives dignity to the office and duty laid upon all men 
to minister the truth to their brethren, if they believe 
that the first-begotten of the Father did not feel it to 
be beneath his dignity to enter into the humblest con- 
dition of the sons of men, thereby making it known 
that the sons of men are also sons of God wdienever 
led by the Spirit of God." 

He did not say this dogmatically, but I had not 
self-possession and self-confidence to say what then 
I crudely thought, — that the whole power of Jesus' 
cross was lost for us, if he did not begin at zero 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



125 



morally as we do, and did not experience as we do, 
at times, the doubt expressed by the words, "Why 
hast Thou forsaken me ? " That is, if he had not lost 
at the supreme moment of the triumph of his ene- 
mies the evidence of things hoped for ; and yet, even 
then, found nothing in himself to express but pity 
and love for the nation whom he had made it his life- 
work to wake up from their sleep of spiritual death, 
in which they had lost sight of the universality of 
the mission of their father Abraham, who founded 
a religioii by which " all the families of the earth 
were to be blessed." For was it not precisely be- 
cause his own will had its human limitation in the 
belief that the redeemed nationality of the Jews was to 
be the instrumentality of redeeming the human race, 
that he came to realize at last that his was another 
will than that of the Father ? Was it not this recog- 
nition of a mistake, though a noble mistake, that 
gave him the opportunity for the greatest act of 
moral life; namely, the act of self-emptying, hum- 
ble worship, which alone lifts the individual into 
an ever-progressive communion with, or, as Peter ex- 
presses it, into a partaking of, the divine nature ? 1 

But though I was unable then perhaps to put this 
thought so clearly into words, Dr. Channing divined, 
from what I did say, the substance of my thought ; 
for he replied in a gentle voice : " There is no doubt • 
at all in my mind that Jesus was as truly a free 
moral agent as any man, and attained spiritual truth 
by moral exercise. He constantly expressed to his 
disciples that they were equally with himself God's 
1 2 Peter, i. 4. 



126 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



children, and could become one with Him in the 
same sense that he himself was one with Him ; 
namely, by the moral act of a courageous faith in 
man. Whether his virtue was pre-existent or not, 
it was human virtue ; that is, it grew by the moral 
process which presupposes the limitation of a crea- 
ture. The difference between the highest archangel, 
or even the only begotten son, and the humblest hu- 
man creature is nothing in comparison with the differ- 
ence between the highest creature and the Creator. 
Jesus' glory was not in his ontological rank, but in 
his freedom from sin. He became the Christ through 
moral growth, in whatever world he had his growth ; 
or he was less, not more, than human. I see some 
advantages in our being kept in ignorance of the form 
and process of his individual growth. It would have 
too much hampered our own action. There is an in- 
spiring effect produced by the 'bright consummate 
flower' if we believe that we too are buds of the 
same tree, 1 branches ' of the same vine, as he him- 
self said. No two branches of the spiritual vine are 
alike. The variety in the natural world faintly sym- 
bolizes that in the spiritual world, and if we are to 
be perfect in Christ we shall each have our peculiar 
form. We are not called to go about the streets 
preaching as Jesus did ; but whatever we do, we, like 
him, must make it ministrant to the redemption of 
our race from the evil in which we are all more or 
less plunged. The merchant in his counting-room, 
you in your school-room, can live Christ's life, and 
preach Christ more effectually, perhaps, than the min- 
ister in his pulpit ! The ministry of the gospel may 



REMINISCENCES OF DTI. CHANNING. 



127 



take as many forms in the moral life of humanity as 
the principle of vegetation and animal life does in the 
material universe. ' Love, and do what you will/ is a 
saying as full of the inspiration of Christ as any pre- 
cept of the New Testament, without which, however, 
it could hardly have been uttered ; for a spontaneous, 
disinterested love is the distinctive characteristic of 
Christianity. Truth, justice, even kindness and grati- 
tude to man, and all rites of worship are enjoined by 
all systems of religion that history has given record 
of, though often with strange intermixtures ; but the 
love which takes captivity captive, and. is perfect lib- 
erty, was first revealed in fulness and consistency by 
Jesus Christ. The visible Church which is called 
Christian has not in its action done any justice to it 
thus far, though there are certainly sublime and beau- 
tiful passages in its history. 

" But let us now have some poetry," he said, rising 
and going to his bookshelves. " Have you yet read 
Wordsworth's ode ' On the Intimations of Immortal- 
ity given in Childhood ?' " I had not; and he ex- 
pressed himself glad of the " opportunity to see how 
it affects one who seems to have studied childhood 
with so much faith in it ; " and giving me the book 
to read it to him, sat down opposite me, his great 
eyes gazing on me as if he would have read my 
inmost soul while this flood of poetry was pouring 
over me for the first time. He seemed desirous not 
to lose a particle of the fact of its first impression 
on me, and delighted to see it was so great as to be 
irrepressible. When I came to the lines, — 

" Fallings from us — vanishings," 



128 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



he stopped me and said, "Do you go along with 
that ? " 

I could not but reply as eagerly as he asked, " Oh 
yes : yes ! " 

" What does it mean ? " said he. 

I tried to tell him that I always had experienced 
feelings, as I looked on human life around me, that 
I first became conscious of as thought when I felt 
them depart, and a pain at finding that there was 
no ground in one for what I had been feeding on.- 
He smiled and said, " Well, well ! read on ; " but 
again arrested me at the lines, — 

" High instincts. before which our mortal nature 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised." 

" Does your experience verify that ? " said he. 

" Certainly," I replied ; " does not yours ? " 

" No," said he, " I cannot recollect the time when 
I did not feel at home in Nature ; when I did not 
like to leave the society of human beings, to find a 
kindred spirit in woods, streams, hills, and especially 
in the ocean ; and it gave me a sense of grandeur 
that I could feel at home in them." 

"But," said I, "it seems to me that this mortal oia- 
tures tremhling means our sense of personal limita- 
tions before ideas of God's greatness and goodness, 
revealed to us not so much by external Nature as by 
great and good persons." 

" Is it that curious phenomenon of childish expe- 
rience, diffidence ? " said he ; " how do you under- 
stand that ? » 

I replied by asking him if it was not the sudden 
development of the sense of individuality before the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



129' 



ideal ? The child does not know clearly which is 
which, and feels as if the persons or presence were 
the ideal, judging and condemning him. I have been 
overwhelmingly diffident ; I could be so caught up 
by imagination as to be free for a time, and then this 
mortal oppression would come down on me as the 
consciousness of my smallest self. 

" I have no experience/' said he, " of being over- 
whelmed by the presence of a human being. The 
ideal did not take the human form to me, but rather 
the blue heavens, the silver sea, and the boundless 
air. Awe of humanity was the later revelation of 
Jesus Christ, of whom I knew nothing in my child- 
hood that was not perplexing. I cannot think of 
self-annihilation and mortal trembling before the good 
and loving." 

" Should you not feel it in the visible presence of 
an angel ? " said Mrs. Channing. 

" No ; least of all in the presence of an angel. 
Nothing is so communicable and so intelligible as 
perfect love." 

T told him I understood what he meant by that ; 
when I was sure the person was loving, it conquered 
the pain of my diffidence, and it was my impulse to 
tell all my own shortcomings and contradictions of 
the ideal that I was conscious of in myself, that we 
might be free to understand one another on the 
ideal. I knew that diffidence had utterly disap- 
peared" from my manners, conquered forever by the 
desperate misery of finding out that I had appeared 
to the world worse even than I was, — that bitter ex- 
perience of which I had already told him. I did not 

9 



130 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



want to make any false pretension of being the hu- 
man ideal, but only would prove that I appreciated 
it as the goal of aspiration to which it was my life's 
desire to lead others, — children especially. He 
gently replied, — 

" The wisest thing for you to do is to forget this 
bitter experience, so complicated with the mistakes 
of others, except so far as to learn to avoid making 
those mistakes in your turn." 

And here he took the book from my hands, and 
himself read the rest of the ode from the line, — 

" Earth fills lier lap with pleasures of her own," — 

to the end, seeming to enjoy my rapturous delight 
in it. Those stanzas ever ring in my soul with his 
voice. 

" Then your experience accepts this as childhood ? " 
he said afterwards, musingly. 

I said, " Yes ; and the poet justifies me in that 
sense of awe which I always feel in the presence of 
childhood, and which makes me afraid to talk to 
children about religion." 

" I know what you mean," said he, " and have felt 
it, especially since I have had children of my own." 
He then told some anecdotes of his own children, 
in which he had been surprised by their under- 
standing of his love, and their delicacy of moral 
appreciation. 

" We have strangely neglected," said he, " the words 
of Jesus, in which he has called us to learn of child- 
hood. The celibacy of the clergy is responsible for 
a great deal of the false theology that has been the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 131 



world's misfortune. The monks, who shut them- 
selves off from holy, natural love of wife and child, 
lost avenues to knowledge of God poorly supplied 
by a deification of the image of Mary and the infant 
Jesus, which cuts them off from the human race, be- 
reaving it of all that is most venerable in it. Yet it 
is noteworthy that the human imagination did create 
such a symbol of what the intellect then denied, or 
fell short of comprehending." 



CHAPTEE X. 



T FIND in a letter, dated November, 1828, the fol- 
lowing paragraph : — 
" There is in Dr. Channing a wonderful tenderness 
and reverence for the individual soul. He seems to 
believe in the pre-existence, not only of Jesus, but of 
all souls ; the only difference being that he thinks 
Jesus was consciously pre-existent, while other souls 
were unconsciously so (as little children still are), and 
clothed upon with flesh in order to become conscious 
by their own individual experience on earth. He 
thinks what w r e may do for each other is to keep 
each other in mind of that inherent immortality which 
is to consecrate our human career, and to prevent our 
mistaking for it any meaner form of self-hood, any 
artificial or conventional self-righteousness. While 
he does not flatter, I never felt anything so encour- 
aging as his taking it for granted that I have no other 
aim than the purest, the most self-forgetting ; while 
yet I feel that he is prepared for my actual short- 
comings, the weakness of the flesh ; for while he is 
not cruelly exacting like the worldly, he takes it for 
granted that ' the spirit is willing/ which is wonder- 
fully stimulating. I never before experienced the 
human touch to be so absolutely at one with that 
breath of God from which I feel that I draw my life, 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 133 

and without which I should fall to rise no more. 
Once when a friend whom I reverenced, as embodied 
wisdom and love for me, declared me and seemed to 
prove me the fool of mere ambition and vanity, I did 
so fall ; nor do I think I shall ever in this world rise 
again to the courage of youth, though I cannot ten- 
know that, if I am a sham, yet behind the mask is a 
child of God, who starts up at every inspiring wrd 
that cometh out of his mouth, to claim kinship wdth 
him and the dear Christ. This is the advantage of 
having bad my understanding convinced before I lost 
my animal spirits. Somebody must have told Dr. 
Channing of my sad experience ; for to-day, when 
I spoke of the mysterious fact that God seems to 
abandon us to the tender mercies of others, which are 
so often cruelties, he said : ' In human intercourse 
sincerity to transparency is to be desired. We all 
need to know how we seem from the standpoint of 
others. But, as yet, few know how to reprove their 
fellow-creatures without disheartening them. The 
common doctrine of an original total depravity has 
almost banished the tender reverence which the inno- 
cence of youth should inspire. The young soul is 
devout and humble, I think, because at that time of 
life the ideal is of infinite beauty, and we suffer in- 
tensely on finding that we fall below it in action, or 
seem to others to contradict it. This pain is a proof 
of our divine destiny and origin, and it should encour- 
age rather than discourage us. We must be willing 
to receive, must crave, what the Quakers call " the 
reproof of truth." But we need to be helped to bear 
patiently and hopefully these pains of growth, by 



134 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



those who appreciate our aspiration. "We live by 
hope/' as the apostle said. Discouragement is the 
only fatal thing. We can hardly measure the crime 
of delivering a sinner up to Giant Despair. He is no 
less than lust of power, a Satan to whom we should 
say, " Get thee behind me!" Our own mistakes and 
sins are not infinite, are superable, and can be used 
to give that insight into our common human nature 
which is the needed material for our benefiting others. 
If we learn the genesis, and the consequences to 
others, of our wrong doings or failures, we may help to 
save others from them. To make our experience of 
sin a minister of good to others will bring us a sense 
of being forgiven by God, who thus makes the wrath 
of man praise Him. It is dangerous to dwell, how- 
ever, too much on our personal experiences, especially 
if there is great sensibility and imagination. Self- 
pity becomes a weakening egotism.' Here he took 
up Wordsworth's poems that lay on the table and said, 
' Hear what your favorite poet says ; ' and he read: 

" ' If thou be one, whose heart the holy forms 
Of young imagination have kept pure, 
Henceforth be warned ; and know 

[He skipped the next four lines and went on] 

that he whose eye 
Is ever on himself doth look on one 
The least of Nature's works, — one who 
Might move the wise man to that scorn which wisdom holds 
Unlawful ever! '0 be wiser thou 
Instructed that true knowledge leads to love; 
That dignity abides with him alone 
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
Can still suspect, and still revere himself in lowliness 
of heart.' " 



REMINISCENCES OF DE. CHANNING. 135 

The foregoing is a specimen of much conversation 
that I have recorded of Dr. Channing on this topic. 
The ministration of Christianity to the development of 
individual character he thought to be as much the busi- 
ness of e very-day life and the school as of the pulpit, 
and the formal instruction of the school and the direct 
exhortation of the pulpit he thought not so much 
the true method, as a general enlightenment of 'the 
mind ; because, as he very frequently said, " Self-edu- 
cation is the only education; and we should look 
upon ourselves as one among our pupils with a cer- 
tain impersonality. Too much stress has been laid by 
so called Orthodox teaching on saving our own souls, 
rather than on saving the general soul of humanity ; 
and this has necessarily come from the dogma of 
everlasting punishment to be inflicted, which inten- 
sifies self by fear (the lowest of passions), and puts 
God in a false position to the imagination, as if he 
were an outside regulator instead of an inward in- 
spires Punishment is self-inflicted, for painful ret- 
ribution is involved as a spiritual consequence of all 
wrong doing; and there is nothing more important 
than to study out the consequences of what we do or 
say upon the character and true happiness of others 
and ourselves, feeling that these are equally our con- 
cern. We may always doubt the wisdom of a reproof 
that excites anger and prompts self-defence. We 
should give our counsel in such a way as to create in 
the recipient of it a desire for more ; and on the other 
hand we should confess our own short- comings, or 
even presumptuous sins, so far only as it may be of 
use to others to know them, and avoid all indiscrim- 



136 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



inate abuse of ourselves. All exaggeration is harmful. 
Books of ascetic devotion are harmful, I think. The 
Epistles of the New Testament are the safest reading. 
They are entirely unequalled in the tone and charac- 
ter of their moral teaching, on account of nothing 
more than their utter freedom from exaggeration and 
sweeping assertions of human evil. Their cheering 
tone, even when most simply laying open all our 
most dangerous liabilities and presumptuous sins, is 
one of the strongest evidences of the perfect com- 
munion of Jesus with the Eternal Father in wisdom 
and love, since he inspired his disciples with it so 
completely. From the moment that they took his 
standpoint in the eternal world, which they did not 
until after his resurrection, they seem to have been 
truly delivered from evil ; and the less we look upon 
this as a miracle, and the more we see it to have been 
the consequence of laws of the common immortal 
nature appreciated by them for practical uses, the 
more we shall be uplifted to the understanding and 
spirit of these first believers, whose privilege it was 
to have had personal communication with the Word 
made flesh ; for Jesus' personal character interpreted 
his words, and made them truth and life. 

" This is true even of Paul, whose education at the 
feet of Gamaliel had so developed and intensified the 
dangerous power of abstraction, which is his intellect- 
ual characteristic, that it was hardly balanced by his 
great heart educated by an exceptional experience, 
which saved him from the possibility of regarding 
Jesus as a pale abstraction, and vivified all his own 
true abstractions and subtleties with a divine life 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



137 



that communed with Christ risen as a living person; 
who had been tempted at all points like as we are, 
and yet passed through without sin ; suggesting that 
human nature in its essence is capable of sinlessness, 
and so of entirely repudiating sin when committed, 
though not without the help of each other/ the firstborn 
of many brethren ' included ! To penetrate the moral 
counsels of Paul, John, Peter, and James so deeply 
as to identify their thought as one, will save us from 
being misled by the characteristic individualities of 
the men ; a danger which Luther and the Eeformers 
did not escape in their interpretation of Paul, who 
must, I think, be amazed to see what his abstraction 
of justification by faith has often become in the hands 
of theologians, who have made faith itself an abstrac- 
tion, — ' the substance of things hoped for, the evi- 
dence of things not seen/ — a written creed, instead of 
a living soul, conscious to itself by communion with 
Jesus, in whom we should see the Father, whose love 
for us is at once our salvation and His glory. The 
obscurity of Paul came from the union in him of the 
subtlest intellect with an oriental imagination, quick- 
ened by a heart so generous that he was prompted 
to make a living sacrifice of his own individuality, 
which he looked down upon in the self-abnegating 
spirit in which we should all look upon our sinful 
experiences, making them the means of teaching 
others to dare to know their utmost sinfulness, be- 
cause of the certainty that there is grace that can 
make evil itself — which is always finite, though 
real — a useful servant to the development and spread 
of a common (universal) righteousness. But it is not 



138 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



a cold scholastic intellect which can grasp the mean- 
ing of Paul's abstractions ; it takes a soul alive in God. 
We must read the inspirations of divine truth by the 
light of the divine inspiration in ourselves. The in- 
spiration of the apostles and evangelists is no other 
in kind than our own, which is the certain conse- 
quence of tfur devout aspiration for it, — that is, of 
our faith, which is the putting forth trustingly of our 
feeling after God ; for that is the deepest feeling of 
all souls, even as idolatry and fetichism prove. It is 
noteworthy that the most intellectual of the apostles 
did become the most simple of believers ; that the 
most presumptuous and bigoted of persecutors has 
given us the most profound statement of a boundless 
charity. On the other hand, John and James, the 
sons of thunder, — who began with the ambitious im- 
pulse of self-aggrandizement, demanding the first place 
in the earthly kingdom that they believed Jesus was 
about to establish on the ruins of the conquered Bo- 
maa empire, and who would have violently forbidden 
every one to work miracles who did not use J esus' 
name as a spell, and would have called down fire from 
heaven to punish the opponents of Jesus, — became, 
after a life of Christian ministration, discoverers as it 
were of love as ■ the essence of Gocl and the sum of 
human duty! e God is love,' and ' Little children 
love one another,' were the final instructions of J ohn 
the Christian prophet ; and ' Pure religion and unde- 
fined before God the Father is this : To visit the 
fatherless and widows in their affliction, and keep 
yourselves unspotted from the world,' that of the 
practical James. The passage from the nadir to the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



139 



zenith of character, through the working within them 
of the words and life of the Master, who washed their 
feet as his last act in order to make them realize that 
they were equally with himself sons of God, and 
chosen to the office of redemption with himself, was 
a process of groioih which they communicate to us in 
their Epistles. We should therefore read the Epistles 
with wide-awake reason and conscience, and learn 
thereby how to make use of all our own varied expe- 
riences, whether of natural or moral good or evil. 

" I look forward,'' he said, " to the time when hu- 
man intercourse shall generally have, the deep tone 
and character of that of the apostles with the early 
church, mingling respectfulness with simple sincerity, 
and earnest helpfulness with self-abnegating humility; 
always inspiring to action upon the race at large, to 
bring all men to the comprehension of their respon- 
sibilities and privileges ; being all things to all men 
for their sakes and not one's own, and rejoicing in 
the living God as the Christian Church seems to have 
forgotten to do in these clays. Their tone is always 
'Kejoice! I say unto you rejoice!' The forms of 
Christian character are different in different ages. 
Martyrdom is a form of duty that may be outgrown 
in the course of ages, but the spirit of martyrdom is 
forever to be grown up to by every individual born 
into the world, if the kingdom is to come." 

In this connection he spoke of the effect of the . 
practical morality of the apostles on their feeling to- 
wards sinners. " It prevented their dividing human 
beings in their own thought into saints and sinners. 
They classed themselves with sinners, and looked on 



140 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



sinners as future saints ; pitying them for the pros- 
pective agony they would have to go through, in re- 
alizing what moral as well as natural harm they had 
done to others, which is the sharpest retribution : 
so that in proportion to the abhorrence or contempt 
naturally felt for their sins, was the pity which is the 
mother of love. This explains that characteristic of 
Christ which carried him into the company of sinners, 
and makes intelligible God's love for sinners, which 
in abstract theology seems so inconsistent with His 
hatred of sin, that in the dry intellectual sphere it 
has engendered the monstrosity of everlasting punish- 
ment, and debased the atonement that the apostles 
felt they had received by Christ into a mercenary 
tragedy, which, by confounding reason and outraging 
love, annihilates God and sets infinite malignity on 
the throne of the Universe." 

It was by a perfectly natural transition that we glid- 
ed again into the subject of Brown's philosophy ; and 
I expressed my surprise at the fact I had just heard, 
of its being adopted into the curriculum of study at 
Andover. After a long pause, he said : " I think I 
understand it. It denotes a change of tone at An- 
dover, that will not reach the depth of their error, but 
make it a less noxious error. Locke's philosophy 
has quenched spirituality in modern thought, and so 
brings men to enthrone logical abstraction above the 
spirit, and to a heartless morality." I wish I could 
remember his analysis of Locke to write it down. He 
said Condillac had brought out, by strict logical de- 
duction from Locke's doctrine of the origin of know- 
ledge in mere sensation, the materialism which 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



141 



resulted in the French atheism of the last century. 
" But Locke himself was no atheist. When he spoke 
of the transformation of sensation by reflection, he 
unconsciously implied the innate ideality which he 
formally denies to be a constituent of human nature ; 
for what can reflection be but the act of a spirit 
which has its own standard by which to judge of the 
impressions and notions which Locke unfortunately 
denominated ideas, thereby banishing the true mean- 
ing of the word idea from English speech, — for in 
the days of Elizabeth they always used idea in the 
Platonic sense of insight of spiritual principle." As 
he went on comparing passages of the " Essay on the 
Human Understanding" with some in " The Eeason- 
bleness of Christianity/' to show how much more 
Locke was conscious of by his English heart and com- 
mon sense than by his speculative mind, I saw that 
there is a deeper kind of thinking than I had hitherto 
known. All I had fondly called my own thinking 
was essentially mere remembrance of other people's 
thinking. I had chosen what suited my feeling with 
independence, but had never thought with originality 
myself. The nearest I came to it was my delight in 
beautiful expression, and the exquisite delight I had 
in trying to make new and finer expression. " That 
you have this delight in expression shows," said he, 
''that you feel a truth lying beyond the reach of 
your understanding; but beware of becoming the 
victim of fine expressions, whether abstract or even 
poetical ones. The last, by moving the feelings, sug- 
gest something that intellectual generalizations can- 
not do ; but the test even of poetic truth is that 



142 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



it quickens our spiritual and moral efficiency. Not 
even poetical expressions do justice to absolute truth. 
Nothing but efficient beneficent action does that." I 
told him I had learned from Campbell's Ehetoric not 
only the danger of abstraction, but the illusions pro- 
duced by reasoning from analogy, if we be not on oar 
guard. " Yes," said he, " our minds are finite. We 
never are more mistaken than when we seem to our- 
selves to have seen the whole truth. Intellectual hu- 
mility, the saying to ourselves that what we have at- 
tained is only a stepping-stone, is the first requisite of 
growth. But if we are conscious of growth, we must 
not be discouraged because we are not omniscient. We 
can, if we are honest, think in the same spirit as the 
woman who cried out, ' Lord, I believe ; help thou mine 
unbelief /' In looking back on our intellectual expe- 
rience, we realize that we have been led by a higher 
reason ; and to advance into more quickening truths 
is the highest enjoyment. Our intellectual being 
consists in a process of reasoning, by which we attain 
height after height, on which we can pause to look 
back and forward, and integrate by intuition what our 
minds have been taught by life and external Nature, 
and what our hearts have received from infinite love." 

When I left him, he gave me the volume of Cole- 
ridge's " Eri^nd^l' in which is the Letter of Mathetes, 
with the reply. " The instinct which makes you delight 
in beautiful expression," he said, "is a good omen. 
But always you should ask yourself, What is the ulti- 
mate meaning of the beautiful expression, and does 
my own experience verify it ? Can you bring up your 
mind to its height, or does it on examination not come 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



143 



up to what you know ? Does it give you new power 
to accomplish your duty ? for vital Truth will always 
do that." 

I need not say how much I enjoyed Mathetes' let- 
ter, and- especially the answer to it, which seemed in- 
deed to put " the telescope of Eeason " into my hands 
and open a new world upon me. In looking over the 
two volumes I came upon the essays on " Method," 
which, when I first read them, were quite beyond my 
mind's grasp, as I told Dr. Channing when I next vis- 
ited him. He expressed no surprise at my difficulty, 
and said, " You must look into the Latin and Greek 
lexicons when you want to know the exact meaning 
of Coleridge's words ; he never uses a word that is 
empty, or even careless ; and therefore the study of 
him is so good for the mind. It may encourage you 
if I tell you I was very feeble in health when I first 
took up those essays on ' Method,' and found them as 
dark as you do, being incapable of the exertion of 
following out the illustration ; and perhaps, even 
when I was better in health, I might not have re- 
sumed them, but that Coleridge had particularly 
requested me to read them. I found no difficulty, 
however, when I attacked them a second time, in a 
better physical condition. They are quite worth your 
study." 

Thus encouraged, I returned to the study of the 
" Friend " with great ardor, and wrote abstracts of 
several papers, which became subjects of conversa- 
tion in my subsequent visits. 

It happened that, in the course of the winter, a 
person dying in my neighborhood, in a house in which 



144 



REMINISCENCES OF DR CHANNING, 



some of my little scholars were boarding, made a 
great impression on their imaginations, for she had 
them brought to her bedside in her last hour, and 
exhorted them to prepare for death by " reading the 
Bible." They immediately came to me, and begged 
me to begin at the beginning and read the whole 
Bible to them. As I had not a minute's time, from 
sunrise to midnight, to do this, they proposed to get 
up before light, and come to my chamber ; and I 
consented. I was struck with the idea that what 
addressed the infancy of a nationality would be better 
understood by children, perhaps, than by minds made 
artificial by what is fondly called intellectual disci- 
pline ; and, under the new impulse I had got from the 
essays on " Method," I wrote out in my journal a 
series of Essays on the Hebrew Scriptures, in which, 
as I told Dr. Channing one day, when telling him 
about my readings to the children, " I first expressed 
thoughts of my own." He asked me to bring them 
to him to read, and I did. When he returned them 
to me, he said among other things, " I was inter- 
ested in them because your mind takes so opposite a 
direction from mine to come to the same result. You 
go back into the past for what I do not seek there, 
but in the future. Truth is to be found in both di- 
rections, for it is in God, to whom e a thousand years 
are as one day,' and who speaks in the past, present, 
and future the same essential truth. I like to eschew 
the error that has truth in its stifling arms. It is, I 
think, a good plan ever and anon to make a clean 
sweep of that to which we have arrived by logical 
thought, and take a new view ; for the mind needs 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



145 



the baptism of wonder and hope to keep it vigorous 
and healthy for intuition. It becomes superficial 
when it spins fine its own generalizations, which of 
course have always been made upon a limited view 
of facts of history and of Nature, and a partial view 
of the spiritual truths given by the heart that cog- 
nizes the infinite things of God. Your papers show 
that you have conceptions of great truths, but it is 
of not so much interest to my mind, as it seems to be 
to yours, to find them in Moses." 

The first three Essays of the six of which he spoke 
were printed some eight years later, in the " Christian 
Examiner " of 1834; but the last three (on Abraham, 
Moses, and the Prophets) were cut off by one of the 
six editors, who was opposed to a series on any one 
subject, and who would not condescend even to read 
them, because, as he said, I must needs be incompe- 
tent to the subject from want of learning. I regret 
the partial publication, because, had they been printed 
then, it would have shown that everybody at that 
time was not given over to that interpretation of the 
Old Testament which took its rise at the Eeforma- 
tion, but from which I was guarded by my mother, 
who, by a natural poetic instinct in her youth, was 
drawn to read them without commentary, and con- 
sequently in the spirit of wonder ; and in the early 
days of the Unitarian controversy, when I was so much 
interested to prove that Jesus Christ was not super- 
human, I had tried to imagine how they were under- 
stood by him, when he read them by the light of his 
own unfallen mind, and learned from them what was 
the business the Father had given him to do. Later, 

10 



146 1 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNINO. 



I found that the Unitarian laity of Boston — at least 
the parents of my little scholars there — repudiated 
the Old Testament as even the record of a Bevelation, 
and thought it would demoralize children : and so I 
would agree that it would, if read in the idea that 
God was in more intimate relation with the Hebrews 
than with other men ; or that the worshippers of J e- 
hovah were not quite as liable to and guilty of sin as 
others. A recent tragedy in Massachusetts shows 
that it is true enough, that, if the old Hebrew history 
be interpreted by the prosaic understanding of Xew 
Enolanders, it is demoralizing: indeed. I was amazed 
at that time to hear an eminent Unitarian lady ex- 
press her horror of the history of Abraham, as in- 
culcating human sacrifice as well pleasing to God, 
when that story of his temptation and deliverance 
from it by Divine interposition, as I understood it, 
was the very thing that saved his posterity from ever 
falling into human sacrifice and other cruel rites of 
Paganism prevalent around him in Syria. 

I found Dr. Charming was interested in my idea of 
guiding children through the Hebrew scriptures, be- 
fore their young imaginations had lost the power of 
interpreting symbols, and greatly pleased when I 
told him of one of my scholars, ten years of age, an- 
swering my question, "Why Moses was not permitted 
to enter the promised land," by saying, " Because 
he believed in a rod;" and adding, ''Was it not 
strange, Miss Elizabeth, when he seemed so against 
idolatry ? " 

Nothing interested him more than many things I 
reported to him of children's sayings ; because he 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



147 



knew I had too much respect for the original mind 
to supersede their thoughts on moral and spiritual 
things by my own. Froebel himself did not believe, 
more than Dr. Channing did, that we should talk 
with rather than to children, if we would " become 
little children," as Christ so emphatically advises, 
and, by living with them in imagination and feeling, 
be born again, as it were, of the Spirit. 



CHAPTEE XL 



DP, CHAKNING'S sympathy with me in the 
spirit in which I pursued my vocation of 
teacher so implicated my life with that part of his 
which I have recorded in my journal of 1825-26, that 
the sermons he preached became events in it. For 
they treated of the principles of moral, religious, and 
intelligent development, that are to be considered 
alike by the educator of children and the preacher to 
adults. The first question with both of these servants 
of society must be, the order in which the elements 
of human nature are to be addressed. 

As he asked me to dine with him on Saturdays, 
whenever he was to preach the next day I walked in 
from Brookline Saturday mornings, after my morning 
session with a class of the older young ladies of 
my school, in which we had freely conversed upon 
some principle of life that became the subject of 
their weekly exercise in composition. They had the 
choice of reporting our conversation, or writing out 
their own opinions on its subject ; and I think it is 
an interesting coincidence, that I find by my journal 
that in every instance the subject of composition I 
chose for my class on Saturday proved to be the sub- 
ject of Dr. Channing's sermon the next day. For it 
shows not only his influence on my mind, but what 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



149 



connected thought and vital growth there was in his. 
Each sermon grew out of the preceding one, though 
they did not superficially seem a series ; nevertheless it 
is plain that instead of subjecting my mind, he gave it 
liberty to grow with his, — thus acting as my educator 
without thinking of doing so. 

On the text, " Ho ! every one that thirsteth come 
unto me ; for I will give you freely of the waters of 
life," he preached a sermon that I have recorded next 
to those on Self-denial. He began with saying that 
" Eevelation always speaks in the language of imagina- 
tion ; it calls religion the thirst of the soul after God 
and excellence. Human desire is infinite. The soul 
is never satisfied with any present good, however ar- 
dently we have desired it. Our cup is never full ; on 
the contrary the effect of attained good is to dilate 
the soul into conception of greater." Having vividly 
illustrated this assertion, he said that he was glad of 
the universal discontent with finite good ; he was glad 
to see that he who sought with all his might for 
gain was never satisfied with his gain ; that he who 
sought his happiness from the breath of honor never 
felt that he received his clue ; that the toiling millions 
around him felt whatever was attained was but a 
starting- place for a new, untiring race ; that possession 
whetted desire ; that desire grew by what it fed on. 
It convinced him that human nature was fitted for 
something that the temporary world could not supply. 

" Distressing as this restlessness is in some respects, 
it is far better than an Epicurean satisfaction, re- 
minding one of the inferior animals who eat, drink, 
and die. It augurs well that men are never satisfied 



150 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



with any attainment. Ancient philosophy proposed 
to quench desire, but this was like attempting to cure 
the hot pulsations and throbbings of fever by drain- 
ing the system of its life-blood. Christianity goes 
deeper than this ; Christianity presents views of God 
and excellence which fulfil without destroying desire ; 
which make desire itself bliss, by making it the 
healthy action of the soul upon an Infinite Good. 
The man who by self-denial and subjection of sen- 
suous passion attains moral elevation and power has 
not the less desire, but that desire looks upward, and 
without being less ardent is blissful, because it car- 
ries with it the faith that he shall drink the living 
waters forevermore. Every step in moral attainment 
opens new and more thrilling views of God, and 
awakens corresponding aspiration for likeness to him. 

"Much as has been felt of the height and depth 
of human passion; much as has been spent in the 
pursuit of gain, of ambition ; strong, wild, and various 
as have been the desires of human affection, — I do 
firmly believe that the intensest desires, the strongest 
aspirations of the human soul have been from the 
heart of the Christian toward his Maker — in the hour 
of strong temptation, at the stake, on the bloody 
scaffold, where it has changed the king of terrors 
into an angel of mercy ! Stronger than the flames 
that enveloped the martyr, it has risen over bodily 
anguish, and turned the last groan into a song of 
triumph. 

" Few minds, you will say, attain this fervent state. 
But why should not all do so ? Eeligion offers to all 
vhe living water; but it will not, cannot quench 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 151 



thirst which does not realize that nothing else will 
quench it. The sun rises over the world, lighting up 
everything with beauty, and causing the flowers to 
spring up and the fruits to ripen, in both the mate- 
rial and mental w T orld ; but if men will retreat into 
dark corners, in vain it rises and shines for them. 
God is brighter than a thousand suns, but if men will 
not use the faculties by which he is to be discerned, 
in vain his brightness beams for them. If they will 
not fix their minds upon God, religion, virtue, it is 
no wonder these appear shadows of words. God by 
his Providence, sometimes by taking away every 
other source of comfort, and by his revelation of 
himself through Jesus Christ, without impinging 
upon our freedom awakens us. No man but has 
more or less of this experience. 

"That is a' solemn moment in every man's life, 
when the soul begins to realize its relations and con- 
nections with the invisible world eternally present ; 
when it begins to measure the difference between the 
material and the spiritual ends of life. Then God 
seems to come forth from the clouds and obscurity 
in which our indulged passions have enveloped him ; 
the living presence of a being infinitely good is felt. 
Who has not had this great moment when new and 
strong aspirations to be at one with God were felt ; 
when, like the ice-bound river beneath the influence of 
the sun, the soul bursts forth and flows freely, spreading 
joy and gladness with refreshing verdure over the 
barren plains of human life ? At such moments of 
awakening, the first conviction that presses on us is 
our own un worthiness. Every stain of the soul and 



152 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



short- coming, though acknowledged in words before, 
now has a new and fearful distinctness ; a strong desire 
arises to purge ourselves of sin, and every step of moral 
effort and attainment opens new views of excellence 
and duty to God and man, and becomes a new start- 
ing point of aspiration to God. A boundless atmos- 
phere opens on us, where imagination may soar, hope 
expand, desire always obtain what refreshes the soul, 
and yet never expire ; for God fills it with new en- 
ergy forever. 

"This desire for something better is the vital spring 
of society and its improvements. Sometimes it im- 
pelled nations to rise up and strike for a liberty 
which they did not fully comprehend, or know how 
to use ; but although the immediate results of such 
struggles might be fearful, a community which shows 
such a sign of life proves itself destined for a higher 
state. It was not to be despaired of. It was infi- 
nitely better than a calm, lifeless, crouching submis- 
sion under the arbitrary power of men. And on the 
other hand, as the most hopeless state of the soul 
was when it was so enervated by prosperity that de- 
sire ceased to act, so it was with communities. Such 
false content had preceded all the catastrophes of 
nations recorded in history." 

The prayer with which he closed was very short 
and more than usually fervent: "May the truths 
spoken and heard enter into our minds, and act; 
and the aspirations that have been awakened pre- 
vent our souls from falling back and resting in a 
false content." 

The journal goes on to say: "This sermon was 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 153 



very different, in the impression it made, from those 
on Self-denial, and showed how many-sided is Dr. 
Channing's power. 

"I drove back to Brookline with Mrs. Sullivan, 
whose soft blue eyes were full of tears of devout joy, 
brightened by her smiles, which always reminded me 
of Montgomery's verse, — 

" ' Created woman with a smile of grace, 

And left the smile that made her on her face." 

She told of observing the effect of the sermon ex- 
pressed in the wonderful face of Daniel Webster, who 
was sitting within sight. She said that Webster was 
a man of very great sensibility to the sublime, and 
impulsively religious ; and she illustrated her remarks 
with many beautiful anecdotes of him. # 

"Mr. Sullivan said, at dinner time, after having 
heard our account of the sermon, that every day he 
lived he felt more and more that preaching ought to 
aim at impressing exalted sentiments, and leave to 
the religious press matters of criticism. But he agreed 
that sermons calmly addressing the mind, like those 
on Self-denial which I described to him, should al- 
ternate with these fervent appeals, though the latter 
were indispensable too ; and there were not enough 
of them preached in the Unitarian pulpit, w T here the 
reaction against sensational preaching is swinging us 
to the opposite extreme. Both fervent feeling and 
clear thought are necessary to purify human passions. 
Not thoughts alone, but earnest sentiments, affect the 
activity of men." 

Tn reporting this last remark to Dr. Channing 
some time after, he said: "Men are not mere spirits 



154 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNIXG. 



of reason, they are sensibilities of heart as well. Sen- 
timent is not mere feeling, it is feeling penetrated 
with thought. The perfection of a man is to think 
clearly and feel fervently at once. I prefer to use 
the word perfection rather than salvation, because 
of a certain technicality that the word salvation has 
acquired in the hackneyed phraseology of the Ortho- 
dox pulpit. American society is in a transition 
phase ; and the Unitarians are right in addressing 
the understanding with explanations of the Scripture 
phraseology, out of which the meaning has died as 
completely as the meaning died out of those symbols 
of the Roman Catholic Church, which were once ex- 
pressive of truth. The Eastern nations expressed 
thought by symbols ; and words traced to their origin 
are always symbols. The rites of the Hebrew Church 
and the imaginative language of the early Christians 
were in their time thought-awakening; when they 
were received by passive, unaspiring minds they be- 
came thought-deadening. Let us leave them then, 
and get new language adapted to awaken the mind of 
our time. Salvation by Christ means perfection ob- 
tained by understanding Christ ; and the word per- 
fection more surely awakens the mind to do its own 
part. It is necessary to have exposition of moral 
law, as well as prophecy of the spiritual result ; and 
these are wonderfully mingled in the apostolic preach- 
ing. Yet even the words of Jesus and of the apos- 
tles need to be interpreted anew to those who have 
received them by tradition." 

The week after the sermon on Spiritual Thirst, I 
find I recorded a conversation with F. S., who had 



KEMINISCENCES OF DE. CHANNING. 155 

heard of it by report. She said : " Such sermons pro- 
duce fanaticism, and unfit people for common life 
and its prosaic duties. They are a very inferior kind 
of preaching to Dr. Kirkland's. Dr. Kirkland hits 
the truth so delicately, and expresses it so aptly, that 
he makes you smile with delight, and surrender your- 
self without the loss of personal self-respect. He is 
not a flatterer, for he throws you off your guard to 
give you a home-thrust. He probes your every 
weakness. He makes the opposite of virtue seem 
to be egregious folly instead of terrible crime ; and 
this subtle influence is not resisted, but is sought for. 
Dr. Channing puts his hearer into an immense ex- 
citement of feeling, and the immediate effect seems 
greater ; but it is comparatively transient. Dr. Kirk- 
land is the more practical preacher. What we want 
to know is, how to act to-day and, here. This is 
practical Christianity. She wished," she said, "that 
Dr. Channing' s genius should illustrate Christian 
morals. It was much more important that we should 
be taught to apply to life what we know T , than to grasp 
after immense acquisitions of spiritual knowledge. 
She had," she continued, "seen and felt so acutely 
the loss to social comfort, usefulness, and present 
happiness, by the high-wrought state of mind which 
such a sermon as this of Dr. Channing produced, 
that she deprecated everything that leads to it." 

I have a purpose in giving this contemporary criti- 
cism of Dr. Channing, from the lips of one who rep- 
resented, I think, the majority of the Unitarian com- 
munity in Boston at that time, when the prevalent 
tone was more in harmony with Dr. Kirkland's kind 



156 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



of preaching than with Dr. Channing's ; for it is inci- 
dental evidence that Dr. Charming was not the repre- 
sentative of the Unitarian sect, nor so regarded by 
the bulk of Unitarians. He had no element of a 
sectarian ; he was interested in no sectarian organiza- 
tion. He respected the Unitarians for their self- 
assertion of the right of free thought, and a free 
expression of it, and always was ready to act with 
and for them for this object. He did not think they 
valued too much the social virtues and refinements, 
the modest self-respect, the truthfulness, and integ- 
rity of every-day life, fidelity to trusts, the high-toned 
honor and delicate courtesies, which Dr. Kirkland 
and other Unitarian preachers set forth as the fruits 
of the true Christian spirit. 

But that ideal of preaching which was fulfilled by 
Dr. Kirkland, Buckminster, and some other Unitarian 
preachers of that day was not Dr. Channing's ideal ; 
neither did his own sermons fulfil it in his own eyes. 
The Christianity he wanted to preach was not only 
to perfect " the life that now is," and which he be- 
lieved had been undervalued too much by the Chris- 
tian Church hitherto ; but it was a spirit of martyr- 
dom (his favorite expression) which came to call both 
the righteous and sinners to seek to enter on that " life 
which is to' come," and with which this ought to be 
entirely one. The text, " The hour cometh and now is, 
when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem 
shall men worship the Father," gave occasion to the 
grand representation of all places as so sacred that 
none can be exceptionally so, and that all men are so 
truly temples of the Holy Ghost that all ecclesias- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 157 



tical discriminations are of no account whatever. He 
said that all men are priests of God for one another, 
and we were exhorted to preserve our self-respect as 
such, and resist clerical pretensions and spiritual 
tyranny as blasphemies of the human soul, as well 
as of the Holy Ghost. This was entirely consistent, 
as he showed, with personal humility and meekness. 
It is not the limited individuality, but the Son of God 
underlying it, which constitutes the dignity of hu- 
man nature. This Son of God grows conscious of 
itself within us as we study the life of Jesus, and 
learn to understand his action on those around him 
on earth, which was so respectful and tender; for 
he never wholly condemned anything in man but 
attempts at spiritual domination. On this he cried 
Woe ! To • all other sinners he said, " Neither do I con- 
demn thee, go and sin no more." We should follow 
Christ in this gentleness and tender humanity. 

We are told that it was also one of Jesus' tempta- 
tions to get dominion over men by selfish exertion of 
his exceptional powers, and display of his exceptional 
gifts ; but he saw that to seize dominion would sepa- 
rate him from, not unite him to, the race. Not by 
individual force, but only by personal self-sacrificing 
love, can man get divine dominion ; that comes only 
by the self-surrender of filial obedience and compre- 
hension of all God's words, which limit and explain 
each other, and help men to respect themselves. The 
conventional dignity which has exalted men to " the 
pinnacle of the temple " is a sad inheritance from past 
times and false views of greatness, which robs us of 
the possibility of exerting such an influence as Jesus 



158 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

exerted, in consequence of his resistance to that 
peculiar devil of temptation incident to greatly gifted 
natures. 

Some of the above thoughts were perhaps recollec- 
tions of the conversation of -the Saturday before, in 
which he spoke again of the Lake poets, and the 
change of their politics by the French Eevolution. 
He said Wordsworth's w 7 hole life and activity were 
on the Christian principle, more thoroughly under- 
stood and more completely inspiring him than any so 
called clergyman of almost any age. " To under- 
stand Wordsworth," he said, " it is necessary to read 
his prefaces. He is a prophet in his prose as well as 
in his verse; his purpose is to give the poetic eye to 
his readers, and he has made an era in the poetic liter- 
ature of England, corresponding to the era in philoso- 
phy made by Lord Bacon. Growth is his watchword. 
It is the true method of education to keep vividly in 
mind the co-operation of God w 7 ith man, and of man 
with God." 

The conversation then glided into the subject of 
adult intercourse with children, and how they are 
regularly demoralized by the way in which they are 
mechanically taught the social proprieties ; and here 
Wordsworth's " Anecdote for Fathers " was read, by 
way of illustrating our false methods. He spoke of 
what he had learned from his own children, and of 
the gracious motherhood that had instinctively cher- 
ished them ; of the deep meaning of God's having 
created human nature in generations, and of Christ's 
referring his disciples to children, as the true teach- 
ers of a world gone astray in self-conceit. Those 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 159 

very ideas that Friedrich Froebel was at this very 
same date elaborating at Keilhau, and gave to the 
German world in 1827 in his "Erziehung der Mensch," 
I find intimated by Dr. Channing in this conversa- 
tion, in which he gave the same views that Froebel 
does of the divine offices of motherhood and child- 
hood, in the general education of humanity. 

" The Infinite Love of God," he said, " imaged in 
the heart of the good mother, and in the innocent 
spontaneity of the little child, are divine means. 
The love of God for man seems to be an empty 
phrase in theological science, where it has been in- 
terchanged for its contrary, — an infinite greed of 
glory, so different from a self-forgetting giving that 
' up-braideth not.' " 

Again he said : " It is impossible to measure the 
misfortune of Christianity in having been adminis- 
tered so long by a celibate clergy, deprived of the en- 
nobling influence of a reverenced womanhood, freely 
reacting upon the truths revealed by Christ ; and also 
deprived of the reacting influence of innocent child- 
hood, which in its earliest spontaneities exhibited a 
heart to love, as well as a desire and expectation of 
being loved, and also a susceptibility of being wounded 
in its self-respecting self-consciousness, which no ani- 
mal exhibits. In this relation," he said, " that when 
his little girl was nearly four years old, she was one 
day to take a nauseous medicine against which her 
stomach revolted; and after long trying by every 
tender influence to help her to the heroic effort, he 
went out of the room despairing, leaving her with 
her mother, whose patience was inexhaustible. Im- 



160 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

mediately afterwards, the child roused up her energy 
to swallow the dose, and then falling back exhausted, 
said, 'go and tell poor dear father that it is done,' " — 
as if she had been helped to do it by the disappointed 
air of baffled solicitude with which he had left her. 
He related other phenomena of the childlife of his 
own children, revealing their power of disinterested 
action ; and I added many another anecdote in illus- 
tration of my favorite doctrine, — that generosity is 
a stronger characteristic of childhood than selfish- 
ness ; that selfishness, in fact, is only the abnormal 
reaction of innocent self-defence, called out by the 
unskilful, rough handling and general wrong treat- 
ment of children, who are made selfish by their par- 
ents' cruel crossing of their innocent activity as well 
as by their no less capricious, selfish indulgence. 

"The only way to be sure of erring in neither 
way," he said, " is to give the most serious meaning 
to the words of Jesus concerning childhood, instead 
of reading them as sentimental euphuisms. We are 
too apt to do this, and therefore we miss the immense 
revelation contained in his wonderful words uttered 
upon the cross, ' They know not what they do.' That 
ignorance was indeed a penal blindness ; still, he who 
could, in such circumstances as Jesus was in at that 
moment, see through them to pity instead of resenting, 
revealed the infinity of generosity possible to man 
whenever he is realizing his sonship to God. When 
education, as w T ell as every other action of man upon 
man, goes on this principle of Pure Love, 1 we shall 

1 Dr. Charming always used this expression — Pure Love — for 
absolute generosity to man as well as love of God. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 161 

begin to realize the Christ that saves. It is a notice- 
able fact that Jesus did not accomplish in his lifetime 
the education even of his disciples, far less ' save the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel.' The latter rejected 
him finally, and the disciples forsook him at the cross 
and fled. But he had prepared their hearts to under- 
stand thereafter the Holy Spirit of the Father, which 
had made him the perfect man. This is the only 
principle of progress, and must be freely chosen as a 
principle, not to be discouraged even by crucifixion 
inflicted by the objects of our self-sacrificing love." 

It is in point here to note a sermon preached that 
fall on the text, " Walk in Love, even as Christ/' etc., 
in which he introduced a definition of Love that dis- 
criminated it heaven-wide from the very moderate 
emotion which commonly goes by the name of Chris- 
tian charity ; for it showed Christian love to be noth- 
ing less than the creative life of God active within 
us. In this sermon he showed the relation of the 
family affections to the development and refinement 
of the spiritual life, which is the realization of our 
vital relation to all men, who constitute one family 
under our Father in Heaven. 

He preached another sermon in aid of the sufferers 
from a great fire in New Brunswick, which touched 
on the same subject. I went to see him the day be- 
fore, and he said he was glad that I came to interrupt 
him ; he had intended to speak extempore, but under- 
took to put down some notes as hints, and had been 
beguiled into writing a discourse which had ex- 
hausted him. He needed to be ministered to with 
a little amusement. 

11 



162 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 

The sermon which he preached the next day was 
on the " Intimacy of Human Belations." We were 
all literally members one of another. All domestic 
virtue and enjoyment was inextricably mingled with 
the mutual dependence of the members of families, 
and loss of property only more completely cemented 
family union by the toil or sacrifice that was neces- 
sary to maintain that union. The laborers in our 
street were toiling, not for solitary comforts or enjoy- 
ments, but for those of families and friends. He de- 
scribed a good mother of a poor family as " the most 
interesting object in the moral world." He had often 
seen the reality of the affecting picture he painted of 
" ceaseless toil and sacrifice," and as often as he had 
seen it he " felt what true dignity was." He con- 
trasted it with the picture of a fashionable woman, 
"who, though adorned with material splendors, and 
gifted with genius and the graces, was comparatively 
worthless. But to its fullest extent this character 
is not frequent with us." He illustrated the indis- 
pensableness of domestic affection to happiness, by 
drawing the picture of a rich man with every out- 
ward appliance of luxury, but whose family was swept 
from him by death, and himself left with only hired 
servants. " Sometimes such terrible bereavements first 
open on the soul the full conception of the mean- 
ing of these family relations, and not seldom the de- 
parture of friends unlocks the sentiment that should 
have estimated and blessed them ; the lost friend 
becomes the influence the living friend should have 
been ! So great public calamities, like that we are 
called to relieve, are spiritual blessings to those whose 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 163 



sympathetic benevolence they awaken. A wider broth- 
erhood of the race is revealed than that of the family, 
in which the family sentiment is transfigured, after 
having given to it its own tenderness. Thus the 
p material losses of the New Brunswick sufferers may 
give us spiritual riches, and that which we bestow 
will come back in a higher form, like the seed-corn 
thrown upon the waters of the Nile, by which each 
man plants his neighbor's land, and receives the same 
boon in his turn ! " 

The next two sermons Dr. Channing preached were 
not sermons WTitten at the time, but old ones. One 
was on the text, " Deliver us from evil." 

" This was a part of the Lord's prayer, and if there 
be a petition which is founded in our nature it is this. 
In all ages of the world, in every country, and with 
all religions, it is the prevailing prayer to be delivered 
from misfortune ; and, in the pagan worship, the most 
costly offerings were heaped on the altars, in the hope 
of averting calamities impending over the country. 
When sorrow and misfortune have overwhelmed us 
or blighted our prospects, the heart turns to its long 
forgotten Father in Heaven for consolation. But 
what is the evil most to be dreaded ? Have we ex- 
amined our hearts ? Have we asked a deliverance 
from pride, from envy, from all the passions which 
distract our peace ? Suppose every one here assem- 
bled should offer up the petition to be delivered from 
the peculiar evil that besets himself and as he believes 
makes him unhappy, what a variety of petitions would 
be presented ! One man would say, ' Deliver me 
from this rival;' another, 'Protect me from danger 



164 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



and illness;' another, 'Preserve my property;' an- 
other, e Continue me my family;' another, 'Save me 
from disgrace in the eyes of my fellow-men.' I do 
not say that some would not pray fervently and 
sincerely for deliverance from the thraldom of sin. 
But although here and there a feeble voice would 
utter this petition, would it not be disregarded amid 
the tumult of other and louder supplications ? I do 
wrong to say disregarded ; for the faintest cry of 
penitence, asking pardon and assistance, is received 
at the Throne of Mercy amid the praises of the rapt 
seraphs and the worship of the 'just made perfect.' 
But would the prayer for deliverance and redemption 
prevail, so as to fill these walls, and Earth's mingling 
voices predominate over those for temporal welfare ? 
I fear not ! The latter prayers are perhaps not for- 
bidden ; but they are fruitless unless joined with 
heart and mind unpolluted by sin. 

" You are unhappy, and you ascribe to outward cir- 
cumstances the miserv within, — to ill health, loss of 
property, bereavement, the perplexed state of your 
affairs, the weather, the east wind, the maladmin- 
istration of government, the offensive pride of a 
neighbor. But are you sure your neighbor's pride 
does not touch the irritability of your own ? Does 
not misfortune make you impatient, peevish, rebel- 
lious ? Do you not find fault with Heaven for misery 
which results only from your own pride and hard- 
ness of heart ? I have read of those — nay, I have 
seen those — who with all the misfortunes I have, 
enumerated are yet at peace ; who, though mourners, 
rejoice; who, disappointed on earth, have a hope of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 165 

heaven. We often think God the author of our 
miseries. But is the will of God the cause of the 
•desperation that drives the suicide to turn away from 
life ? Is it ' the will of God that infuses feebleness 
into the limbs, sickness into the body, brutality into 
the mind of the intemperate man? Is it the will 
of God which has introduced discord, ill-will, and 
bitterness into the bosom of that divided family ? Is 
it the Spirit of God which makes the envious man lay 
snares for the reputation, perhaps the life, of his fel- 
low-men ? Are those armies that have entered that 
bloody field of battle, bearing terror and desolation in 
their van, marching under God's commands ? 

" Suppose all the miseries incident to human nature, 
— disgrace, poverty, losses, sickness, reproach, bereave- 
ment, — all heaped on one devoted head ; suppose that 
one individual were called to endure all that we are ever 
called on to suffer, — still this sum of misery would be 
light compared with the misery of sin, that word so light 
upon our lips, and scarcely heard by our ears, but 
which brings more ivoe 1 in its train than the aggregate 
of outward misfortunes could produce ! The weapon 
with which the heart wounds itself is more enven- 
omed and deadly than any other; and the stings of 
conscience more severe than those inflicted by the 
scorpion's fangs. The evil within our own hearts, my 
friends, is so great that God only can remove it. 
Pray to be delivered from this evil, and the burden 

1 This word brings this whole sermon back to my mind, — his 
utterance of it was so wonderful, or rather the intonation/ These 
sermons without the tones in which they were uttered are like 
pictures faded. 



166 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



will be lessened. You cannot, by multiplying pleas- 
ures and occupations, escape from the clouds which a 
corrupt heart and sinful courses have gathered around 
you. You do but increase them. Can a man blinded 
by a cataract, by using magnifying glasses, or rolling 
his eyes continually towards the sun, enlighten them, 
without first employing the physician to couch them ? 

"An objection may be ready to burst from the lips 
of many of you: Shall we for religion neglect our 
worldly affairs, and, to obtain this peace, sacrifice our 
habits of profitable employment, or put a stop to the 
improvements of a material character now making ; no 
longer conduct the commerce which enriches us and 
civilizes the world ? Far from it, my friends. I do- 
not ask you to leave your daily business for religion, 
but to take religion with you to the field, the count- 
ing-room, the office, and your homes. The secret 
prayer in the closet is important, but it avails you 
little, unless the principles of true religion are your 
constant companions. Let these attend you to your 
place of business, and moderate your love of gain ; 
to the loaded board, and there restrain your sensual- 
ity ; into society, and there repress unkind thoughts, 
discourage slander. Then indeed shall the Lord lead 
you out of the way of temptation, and deliver you 
from evil." 

"Acquaint thyself with God and be at peace." 
He spoke of the intimate knowledge of God, con- 
scious communion, and discriminated it from mere 
assent to the fact of his Bein^. He said : — 

" Conscious humility is its condition, — a sense of 
our need both of strength and pardon." He spoke of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 167 

the drawbacks on humility made by the pride of at- 
tainment ; and opposed to the small acquisitions of 
man the fact of the universe in analysis ; ending, after 
a description of. man's greatest knowledge, with: " You 
are still perhaps in darkness ; the faintest pulsation 
of spiritual life has not yet begun to beat within your 
breast. Unhappy man ! the poor, the ignorant relig- 
ious man has done more than you; he has looked 
beyond the narrow circle of your knowledge ; he has 
carried his petitions above the range of your discov- 
eries, even to the foot of the throne of the Most High 
God." 1 

Another condition of the acquaintance with God 
is prayer. Indeed prayer is the acquaintance. He 
spoke of how we could cultivate the love of prayer 
by meditation on ourselves, on God, on humanity ; 
and ended with : " But if all will not do, may sorrow 
and disappointment, and even conscious shortcoming 
in- external duty, drive us to Him for consolation and 
comfort ! May the earth shake .under our feet, clouds 
gather black over our heads, and everything be re- 
moved on which we rest, till we are fain to call on 
the omnipotence, the justice and mercy, and the long- 
suffering of our God ! " 

1 See, for a full development of this idea, the sermon delivered 
on the first meeting of the Fraternity of Churches, vol. iv. of his 
complete Works. 



CHAPTEE XII 



TV/TY sense of responsibility in writing out my 
-LtJ- Eeminiscences of what was Dr. Channin^'s 
thought on important subjects, and my fear lest my 
apprehension of his meaning at the moment, and 
therefore memory of what he said, should fall short 
of his thought, are quickened by seeing the careless- 
ness with which many of our contemporary writers 
report his views, and over-state the limitations of the 
Unitarian faith of that early day. Every change that 
has transpired in the average Unitarian community 
seems to be assumed as an " advance," of which there 
was then not even a presentiment; and the scrupu- 
lous conscientiousness of statement, especially charac- 
teristic of Dr. Channing, is regarded as altogether a 
drag ! But it seems to me that the reverence and 
humility which made Dr. Channing so cautious of 
utterly condemning any of the convictions of past 
thinkers was "euphrasy and rue" for the spiritual 
eyes of himself and friends ; enabling them to un- 
earth truth of a much more profound character than 
can be found on the surface, by the audacious thinkers 
who suppose all that is most sacredly true is yet to 
be evolved ! 

Dr. Channing believed in growth, which is but the 
Saxon word for evolution ; bat with the deciduous of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 169 



either to-day or to-morrow tie did not lose sight of 
that in the seed, which is the same " yesterday, to- 
day, and forever;" and he never lost sight of the 
undying enemy attendant on free-thinking, which is 
too often least suspected by those loudest in professing 
to acknowledge no guide, in their search after truth, 
outside of their own souls. This enemy is the indi- 
viduality of the soul itself, which limits its inspira- 
tion; that is, prevents a full apprehension of what 
God is revealing. For as God cannot make a valley 
without making hills to inclose it, so he cannot give 
the whole of himself to his creature, without destroy- 
ing that life in itself which, if not the highest charac- 
teristic of man, is yet an indispensable one ; giving 
the power to shut one eye in order to penetrate par- 
tial truth. No single soul is capable of the whole 
image of God ; it always reflects but a part of truth, 
and must seek the complement of what is revealed to 
its own individuality in what is revealed to other 
individuals, who have other stand-points. He can 
comprehend the whole horizon only by a progres- 
sively widening, sympathetic, mutual intercourse with 
his fellow creatures. Therefore is the fulness of a 
man's wisdom largely dependent on his actual or 
imaginative relations with others, and the fidelity 
with which he fulfils the duties belonging to his rela- 
tions to them. If human fraternity is actually the 
worship of God with the heart, as knowledge of Na- 
ture is the worship of God with the mind, we see that 
spiritual freedom cannot be attained by intellectual 
exercise alone, but only by a complete balance of the 
moral and intellectual activity, and reverence of the 



170 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



past of humanity as well as of the future, — past, 

present, and future being one in God, " in whom we 
live and move and have our being." Irreverence of 
the past is loss of sympathetic relations with fellow 
souls. Those who contemptuously throw away the 
results of ages of human thinking and experience, by 
refusing to partake of other men's knowledge because 
it had its limitations, fall into the — perhaps narrower 
— dungeon of their own limitations. We are born 
and often grow up unconscious prisoners of our mere 
temperaments. To find truth in error, as we have to 
do, we must 

" Guard every part, 
" But most the traitor in the heart." 

This is difficult to do and to see the need of, because 
it is so near to us and quick with the immeasurable 
force of our self-will ; wherefore the imagination 
has personified it as a Devil outside of its, which is 
the subtlest error of all, for it divides our sense of 
responsibility. 

Dr. Channing's was one of the few minds, of this 
or any age, who have acknowledged freedom to be a 
virtue that must be carefully cultivated; and who 
was at the same time singularly intelligent of this 
subtlest of all enemies, that can only be conquered by 
the religious humility that seems to be twin-born 
with a certain respect for the faiths of other men, 
component with the true faith that all men are grow- 
ing into ! Believing that the God who to the heart is 
love is one and the same with the God who to the 
intellect is truth, he manfully faced every difficulty 
and dodged no questions ; but in seeking answers he 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



171 



looked into the recorded experiences of men as well 
as into the science of outward Nature ; and, vice versa, 
asking if any apparent discrepancy might not be in 
his own shortcoming of heart or mind. 

It will be observed that Dr. Channing accepted the 
Gospel narratives as veracious. When I knew him he 
had left the examination of the authenticity of the 
texts, which he had at one time fearlessly undertaken 
on the same principles as he undertook to authenti- 
cate any ancient book. He showed no superstition 
about the records, but an immense interest in the 
truths they contained. Inspiration and Revelation 
seemed to be in his vocabulary convertible terms : he 
said that a booh could not be inspired, but that it 
could record the inspirations of gifted men ; all of 
which he considered to be more or less revelation 
of God, including Jesus Christ's, in whom, because of 
his presumed sinlessness, he thought they were abso- 
lute. But he recognized that as Jesus revealed God's 
truth in a human life, and his disciples transmitted it 
in human words, we must interpret them by our hu- 
man heart, reason, and good sense. He did not, how- 
ever, think his own heart, reason, and good sense 
absolutely reliable ; and was ever ready to compare 
his thoughts with those of other men. Hence he was 
always open to suggestion, and considered it the 
greatest human enjoyment to study the record of that 
typical life in company with others. I remember, 
on his receiving a letter from Eammohun Boy, in 
which the great Brahmin said that he found Christian 
commentators on the Gospels dwelling so exclusively 
on the tender, softening sentiments of Christianity, 



172 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

that it was not edifying reading for the Hindus, who 

needed rather the strengthening, unyielding, uncom- 
promising, and energetic principles characteristic of 
Jesus Christ, to arouse them and give them life. Dr. 
Channing said, with animation, that it would not be 
till all the nations had received and acted upon the 
Christian Eevelation that we should understand " the 
unsearchable riches of the gospel of Christ." Chris- 
tianity had been hitherto occupied in subduing and 
refining the stormy elements of the Northern races. 
Not till it had energized the East and South should 
we see the full glory of the kingdom of Heaven on 
earth ! Hence he was always wide awake to inquire, 
with the help of others of different temperament and 
education, into the meaning of the recorded life of 
Christ, which as we grow in spiritual depth and in- 
tellectual clearness on the one hand, and in knowl- 
edge of natural circumstances on the other, opens on 
us 'more and more the whole truth appreciable by 
men; but not by any one man without the help of 
his fellows, — among whom, with all reverence, he 
always counted Jesus Christ; whose thought and 
word about God was therefore the object of his con- 
stant searching study. He preached many sermons 
(to two of which I have already referred, pp. 7, 8) to 
express that what is deepest in truth is most certainly 
to be found suggested by the foremost men of all 
ages. It was always a new evidence to him that 
Jesus was " the Christ," whenever he found, in an- 
cient or modern theosophy or philosophy, the spon- 
taneous expression of the same truths which Jesus 
uttered. He therefore was fond of quoting whatever 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING-. 173 



word that lawgiver, wise man, prophet, evangelist, or 
apostle had said on this very point. There is no 
modern free religionist who was more glad to ac- 
cept the inspirations of the Eastern theosophists than 
he. I myself read to him Sismoncli's history of 
Mahomet, in his "Decline and Fall of the Eoman 
Empire/' and well remember the whole-hearted en- 
joyment he had of it. It was quite within the scope 
of his philosophy to believe that the son of man 
manifested himself as the Son of God in all ages ; 
that God the Father was ever a very present God, 
waiting to be gracious to his children from the be- 
ginning, and finding everywhere children to be more 
or less gracious unto, but only with their own free 
choice. "What gave such intense life to his piety and 
charity was his conviction that God had given unto 
the son of man to have life in himself, and that he 
creates free beings from love, which word had a mean- 
ing to him infinitely beyond benevolence. 

He certainly did think that, in point of fact, Jesus 
saw deeper and wider into God than any man of 
whom we have record ; for all others were manifestly 
limited, one-sided, to say the least, and the national 
religions of which they had been the primal sources 
had proved deficient (like the Chinese) in ideality, 
and monstrous in materialistic activity ; or, like the 
Hindus, extreme in intellectuality, abandoning this 
life to the impulses of passion ; or ascetic, in which 
last category must be classed the Buddhism of the 
good and great Sankya-muni, whose self-denial did 
not limit itself, like Christ's, to the removal of ex- 
cesses, but would deny all exercise and development 



174 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 

of individual human intellect and individual human 
heart. Jesus had accepted all the relations of men 
to Nature and their fellow-men as sacred, to be made 
harmonious with their relation to God. With the 
spirit of martyrdom in its highest power, there was 
not in him a shade of asceticism. He recognized no 
evil that was not removable, and no good that was 
not attainable by the lowliest man in some sphere of 
existence. He chose his companions without qualifi- 
cation of a conventional character; and in all his 
conversation on earth seemed to be more intent on 
veiling his superiorities than displaying them, so 
that he might establish a genuine sympathy which 
would make all men feel and hope to be one with 
himself. Jesus certainly did fulfil all the inspirations 
of the Hebrew prophets ; but not more certainly, and 
not otherwise, than he fulfilled those of all the Eth- 
nic prophets, poets, and philosophers ! The writers 
of the New Testament, in setting forth Jesus as the 
king of men and only begotten Son of God, did not 
on that account any less believe that Abraham, Moses, 
and the prophets were revealers of God. We im- 
poverish the idea of Christ, when we consider him as 
mcluding the Eternal Word in any way that preludes 
it from persons of any age or nation. When our 
modern free religionists — who seem to themselves 
and some others to be a higher evolution of the 
Unitarian sect than Dr. Channing — speak of Chris- 
tianity as a narrow Jewish sect, and of Jesus Christ 
as resting his claim of authority upon the correspond- 
ence of the circumstances and facts of his life to the 
expressed hopes of the old Hebrew prophets, or as 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 175 

setting up an autocratic church whose idea was to 
sacrifice the present life, and 'skip all its duties and 
possible achievements, in order passively to receive a 
reward for professions of allegiance to him, — a hap- 
piness in another world which excludes all the rest of 
the human race, — they certainly entirely sink below 
not only Dr. Channing, but all those who had any 
community of thought with him, and even of those 
Unitarians who most differed from Dr. Channing. 
Nor do I agree that any of the great sects of Chris- 
tendom ever had so narrow a view, though individ- 
uals bearing the name of Christian in all sects may 
be found to have fallen into statements that would 
bear that interpretation. The large portion of the 
early Christian Church, which was Greek, were as 
profuse in their quotations of Plato, showing how 
he had anticipated the revelation of Christ, as the 
Hebrew Christians were in their quotations from 
their own prophets. As some of the Hebrews, in 
becoming Christians, did not cease to be Jews, so 
many of the Greek Christians did not cease to be 
Platonists. Justin Martyr and St. Augustine are not 
solitary instances of this, but only striking examples 
of it When Dr. Channing was reading to me from 
Cou^m^s translation of Plato, he was always eager to 
mark all the proofs, scattered through the~ works, 
of the fact that Plato was seeking the same truth 
respecting God, the nature of Man, and the possi- 
bility of the intellectual and moral reunion of cre- 
ated men with their Creator, which was the substance 
of Christ's revelation; and in the biographical dia- 
logues — the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo — he dwelt 



176 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



with great satisfaction on the declaration of Socrates, 
that true lover of wisdom, who in forecasting the life 
beyond death saw the necessity of " the gods sending 
one of themselves" to tell us of that life which the 
powers of the human understanding were not ade- 
quate to conceive, nor human genius to portray. I 
remember his saying, in so many words, that the 
" Apology" of Socrates contained a profounder argu- 
ment for immortality than the " Phaedo," and de- 
lineated a life in the world lived in Jesus' own 
spirit of devotion to the will of God; while the 
" Crito " evinced the same spirit of martyrdom, giv- 
ing away life rather than break the law which best, 
though imperfectly, represented the sovereignty of a 
free State. Athens was imperfect enough, certainly, 
when it murdered its most disinterested lover and 
servant ; but still it was the best country in the world 
at that time, and that was a transient administration 
that knew not what it did, like the Sanhedrim, who 
cried out, " We have a law, and by our law he should 
die." In both cases, the great martyrs saw that their 
murderers were prisoners of their own penal blind- 
ness. In both cases, their voluntary death, because 
they could not abandon their idea and practice of 
duty, opened the eyes of men to the truth, as soon 
as transient passion had subsided and given place to 
meditation. I have heard Dr. Channing maintain 
that Socrates was inferior to Jesus as a revelation to 
man, if only that he was intellectual merely, while 
Jesus was spiritual and humane as well ; and that 
Jesus suffered more than Socrates, because' his wider 
sensibility comprehended the wants of the heart of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 177 



humanity as well as of its mind, and the happiness 
and dignity of those at the nadir of society as well 
as of those at the zenith. He can be fully compre- 
hended only progressively, as the human mind for 
ever and ever gauges more and more deeply the heart 
of the living Creator and Father of men. The good 
sense of Jesus, his freedom from all fanaticism of 
speech or action, together with his ideality, place him 
above all other revealers of God. 

Early in my acquaintance with Dr. Channing, he 
told me the internal history of a friend and classmate 
of his, who passed through a period of atheistic spec- 
ulation, whom this quality of Jesus, " his good sense " 
— -his "always acting from the proximate motive," 
while his thought comprehended the heights and 
depths of the human and divine nature, — brought 
him to sit at his feet and be healed. This story I 
may hereafter tell, as I heard it in part from Dr. 
Channing, and in part from the gentleman himself. 
But in this connection I will mention one other cir- 
cumstance showing the openness of Dr. Channing's 
mind to any ray of light from whatever quarter it 
shone. 

I remember, in 1832, finding in Eobert Kerr Por- 
ter's " Travels in Persia " a drawing that he had made 
from a bas-relief which he found in the ruins of a tem- 
ple of Mithra, that would have served for an illustra- 
tion of the story of the nativity, as told by Matthew 
and Luke. There was the infant Year, with the sun 
round its head, sitting in the arms of mother Nature ; 
cows and sheep about ; shepherds doing homage ; and 
kings presenting offerings ! It was a work long ante- 

12 



178 REMINISCENCES' OF DR. CHANNING. 

dating the Christian Era. I carried the book to Dr. 
Channing's house to show him the picture, and read 
Porter's description ; and it was suggested between us 
that as the origin of those chapters, as every Biblical 
critic knows, has not the same documentary proofs of 
authenticity as the rest of the narrative, being only 
found in Latin manuscripts, they might have been a 
sermon of some early Persian Christian, who saw em- 
bodied in this myth of the birth of the New Year the 
great fact that the Sun of Eighteousness, born of 
woman, is symbolized by unconscious Nature in its 
primal facts, as well as by the intuitions of prophets 
and philosophers in their hours of highest inspiration. 
Dr. Channing entertained this thought hospitably, and 
said it was noteworthy that, in all ancient traditions, 
symbolic stories, outside of the ordinary experience of 
the course of Nature, gathered round the birth of ex- 
ceptional men, This story as it stands embodies the 
most momentous truths, — the filial relation of the 
human soul to the living God ; the essential chastity of 
human marriage ; and the sacredness of human parent- 
age. The fact of Christ's being born in Bethlehem, 
and at the date indicated by the tax laid by Augustus, 
was not invalidated by supposing this symbolic repre- 
sentation of these great ideas that Christ's manifesta- 
tion of sinless purity and divine sonship revealed. 
As I have said before, Dr. Channing was very tena- 
cious of the veracity of the Gospel recorders. The 
fact of these Memoirs being in the main simple, 
honest records of fact he considered of incalculable 
value to mankind. Nothing is more important, he 
was accustomed to say, than that vital truths should 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 179 



not appear visionary to the common sense. Some 
truths, however, admit of only a symbolic representa- 
tion ; and the symbols of ancient literature were 
often in very homely form : for instance, the great 
story of Cupicl and Psyche, which like the parables 
of Jesus, if too literally interpreted, sometimes indi- 
cate even a doubtful morality. He said that the study 
of the history of the canon of the New Testament in 
the early ages of the Church, and the selection from 
the mass of writings that claimed a place in it, was a 
most useful study. The legends of the Madonna 
were mixed up with traditional facts, and with the 
Egyptian myth of Isis and Horus. The mother and 
child was also a sacred symbol of the Phoenicians. 
Dr. Channing did not repudiate all these old myths, 
as if they were wicked falsehoods. He considered 
them sacred adumbrations of truths which were made 
sun-clear in the actual life of Jesus Christ ; and he 
often quoted one of the Thirty-nine Articles of the 
English Church, which felicitously says, " Christ is the 
truth of our nature.'" 

Because Dr. Channing did tenaciously hold on to 
the historical fact of Jesus of Nazareth manifesting 
the Lord Christ, some of the free religionists say he 
compromised his own freedom and acknowledged an- 
other authority than that of his own soul. But Dr. 
Channing held fast to Jesus as the liberator from all 
limitations, even from that last one of one's own 
individuality. He turned from the finite side of 
himself to the infinite side, which Jesus revealed to 
him by the infinite love he displayed to his brethren; 
in his appreciation of their infinite side, at the very 



180 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



moment when their finite side was turned towards 
himself — crucifying him ! Surely Jesus was the pure 
conquering soul in that extreme passage of his history, 
proving a life in himself which precluded death, — a 
life which could lay down and take up the material 
body at will. His acceptance of Jesus as the Lord's 
anointed was the charter of his own soul's freedom ; 
for he did not accept Christ as an abstraction, but as a 
life actually lived on earth, — the supreme life of the 
pure soul, which he felt to be quick within him- 
self by virtue of that which he held in common with 
Jesus from the Father — conscious communion with 
God's will. He rejoiced in Jesus as the anointed soul 
through knowledge of whom he could look down on all 
limitations as but the clouds and darkness round about 
the throne of the spirit. Unquestionably there is a 
slavish, soul-quenching, mind-trammelling way of hold- 
ing the creed of a " Lord Jesus Christ." The words are 
an idol, the thought an idol ; but when we ourselves 
realize the life that this thought defines and these 
words express, it ' is not an idolatry which debases 
and destroys, but a worship which elevates and makes 
alive. 

On the 27th of November, 1825, Dr. Channing 
preached on the text, " Walk in love, even as Christ." 
He began his sermon by speaking of Christ as our 
exemplar; the perfection of his character ; how it had 
been appreciated by all, even by those who neglected 
to follow his example ; how infidels had borne their 
testimony of admiration to it ; how it had stood unim- 
peached amid all the furious invectives that have 
been heaped upon his religion. This speaks well of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 181 



man's power of appreciating excellence. " But per- 
haps the universal consent with which praise and ad- 
miration are bestowed, the habit of rendering this 
tribute with our thought and in words, has contrib- 
uted to remove him too far from the heart. We are 
in the habit of considering him as strictly inimitable, 
though the Scriptures present him as an example. 
This feeling of his inimitableness has no foundation 
in truth. Jesus Christ is indeed raised high over the 
records of human virtue; but he is not raised up 
there like the beautiful models of ancient statuary, 
merely to be admired: he is not surrounded with 
precipices ; he constantly points to the paths by which 
others may ascend. The Christian, when viewing the 
character of Jesus, should remember that in the 
course of his progress such is to be his own character; 
he views in his Saviour his future self, and draws 
inspiration and animation from the sight." 

He dwelt long on this ; and then began to analyze 
the character. " The essence of Jesus' character was 
love. Love was written on every action of his life 
and breathed from his dying lips. Amid all the cor- 
ruptions and misconceptions men had made of Chris- 
tianity, the love of its founder had never been denied. 
It had shone as a star in the midnight of the Church. 
It had infused the spirit of mercy into the breast of 
the mailed warrior, and sent an ameliorating ray 
through the darkness of the Middle Ages. It had in- 
deed kept the Church existing. It was the all-powerful 
chain which had bound men together to the name of 
Christ, when they had ceased to embody his spirit in 
their own actions. And this essence of the character 



182 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



of Jesus is the first precept of his religion. Unless 
we are animated by the same spirit, we are none of 
Christ's. We are called upon to love as Christ loved; 
•to love our fellow-beings not with a general good-will 
only, — of which none, save the misanthrope, was des- 
titute, — but with deep, disinterested affection, as it 
dwelt in the breast of the Lord. But Love is an 
affection not in its nature to be commanded ; it is 
essentially voluntary. Did Christianity merely give 
us the precept ' Love one another/ it had done little 
for us ; but it also throws a flood of light upon our 
nature, in giving us Jesus as a type, which renders 
the love it commands an instinctive impulse." He 
enlarged on this, describing our nature as Jesus actu- 
alized it, and contrasting this with such representa- 
tions of man as we found in religious books and in 
the books of worldly men ; for such persons as Hel- 
vetius and Lord Chesterfield talked about human 
nature very much as some religious teachers do, 
though in particulars instead of generalities. " One 
great cause of the want of love among men arises 
from taking these representations as true. The Chris- 
tian spirit can only come from taking more reverential 
views of the soul. What a blow would be given to 
the pride of birth, the pride of station, the pride of 
wealth, the pride of acquirement, even the pride of 
talents, should we learn so to appreciate our common 
nature and to reverence it as to see in the humblest, 
the poorest, the most ignorant, a mind destined in its 
progress to grasp a wider expanse of thought than the 
mind of Newton comprehended, — as an incipient 
spark, whose fervency would make appear cold and 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 183 



tame the philanthropy of Howard ! Some persons say, 
' These elevating views of our nature encourage pride ; 
and men are proud enough now ! ' Yes, they are proud 
of distinctions, of honors, of wealth, of everything ex- 
ternal which they may attach to themselves ; but who 
is proud of his nature ? No one can be proud of what 
is common to all. If such views encourage reverence 
for ourselves, they encourage reverence for others in 
an exact proportion; they encourage self-sacrificing 
love for all. So unaware are men of the greatness of 
our nature, so unaccustomed to think of it amid their 
strife for external advantages, that the preacher who 
dwells upon this sublime and natural theme, this 
truth so certain and undeniable, — who sets forth the 
power of the mind, not in its present state of prog- 
ress only, but in its immortal hopes, its expanding 
perfection, its unfading glory in the life to come, — is 
accused of extravagance and romance ; and because it 
is so vast, he is afraid to address his people on this 
subject in the language of feeling and truth, but must 
circumscribe and deaden, and inclose within certain 
prescribed expressions his thoughts, as if it were pos- 
sible to exaggerate it, as if at best we did not see the 
subject most imperfectly and dimly ! Were our na- 
ture appreciated as it should be, love to our neighbor 
would be as spontaneous and fervent as love to our 
natural and chosen friends now is." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



T NOW heard Dr. Channing every time he preached. 

My records of the sermons are too voluminous to 
print in full ; but I must needs make such extracts 
from them as shall give an idea of his deeply earnest 
living ; his victory over the languor and weakness of 
his body. Only those who knew him in his daily 
life could appreciate this sublime conquest of day 
after day. 

He recognized the cause of his ill-health in the 
broken physical laws of his youth, when neither his 
friends nor himself realized that the body is an effect 
of God's laws as truly as the mind is a complex of 
them ; and that righteous self-denial does not involve 
partial suicide, — though of course there are times 
when the law of the members is to be sacrificed 
wholly to the higher law of the soul, as well as at 
all times to be subordinated thereto. When I be- 
came acquainted with Dr. Channing, he had ceased 
to believe that the body, any more than the intellect, 
was given as a temptation merely, an enemy to be 
antagonized ; it was an instrumentality which he be- 
lieved had its right to be, and which would be found to 
have an element of immortality in itself. For besides 
the symbolic meaning of that resurrection of Jesus 
Christ, — which he believed to be a fact of history, — 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 185 

he thought the fact suggested a principle of natural 
science; namely, that the soul, instead of being partly- 
dominated, as*it seems to be now, by the body, might, 
in proportion as it had escaped all lapse (as he be- 
lieved the soul of Jesus did entirely, by its own free 
choice, from the beginning, by doing the Heavenly 
Father's will), transform gross matter into an ethereal 
substance, to be made visible or invisible at will, 
symbolized in the phenomenon of the Ascension. 
Again and again in his conversation he suggested 
this idea, citing the evidence of this power of the 
soul given in the expression of the human counte- 
nance that is visible to the eye. The story of " Harry 
Gill," of the " Idiot Boy," and a multitude of other 
passages of Wordsworth founded on facts, intimate 
a positive truth of the same nature as Christ's mira- 
cles of healing and his Ascension. 

To some minds it may seem a strange contradiction 
that Dr. Channing should have regarded matter as 
capable of becoming immortal in ethereal form, and 
yet have had special distaste to Swedenborg's phrase- 
ology. But this contradiction, if it may be called so, 
did exist in his mind. It . seemed to me, that, if he 
had not had this strong distaste, he w^ould have found 
a great deal in Swedenborg's writings with which he 
would have harmonized. But whatever was coinci- 
dent in his thought with Swedenborg's (which has 
been recently set forth in a clever publication J ) was 
certainly original with Dr. Channing ; that is, was not 
derived from any reading of Swedenborg. 

He did not have the same repulsion to the writings 

1 Mr. Barrett's. 



186 REMINISCENCES OF DR.* CHANNING. 



of Sampson Eeed. Of this I can adduce striking 
proofs. About 1820, when Sampson Eeed was in the 
Cambridge divinity school, — the only school so un- 
fettered by creeds to be signed on entrance as to 
admit half a dozen believers in Swedenbom amono; 
its students, — he took his degree of M. A., and de- 
livered on the occasion an oration on Genius, which 
was not put into print till 1848. 1 This paper was 
however handed about in manuscript, and I had a 
copy of it, which, coming to my hand one day, I 
took to read to Dr. Channing. He was extremely 
pleased to hear it, and said that he sat on the plat- 
form, in his official capacity, on the day when it w T as 
delivered, and was so much struck, by it that he could 
with difficulty sit still. " Never," said he, " had I heard 
on college boards anything so utterly original and 
full of life. I hoped the greatest things of that young 
man. But he has given himself up wholly, I hear, 
to Emanuel Sweclenborg, and does not allow his mind 
any liberty to transcend those dreary memorable re- 
lations." 

/ But within a year or two of this remark Mr. Reed's 
| essay on " The Growth of Mind " appeared. Dr. Chan- 
ning seized on it with the greatest interest, and thought 
it worthy of the mind which had seen so far into 
the nature of genius in its college exercises. Sub- 
sequently he read Mr. Eeed's " Essay on Miracles " 
(which was added to a later edition of " The Growth of 
Mind"), and pronounced it the only satisfactory word 
he had ever read on the subject. He was especially 

1 In the ^Esthetic Papers published that year in Boston. Still 
sold by A. Williams, corner of School and Washington Streets. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 187 



delighted with the affirmation of Mr. Eeed that the 
miracles of Jesus, instead of being violations of the 
laws of Nature, are the measure of the fall of man. 
" Jesus ' miracles, especially his resurrection and as- 
cension," he said, " were statements of the highest laws 
of Nature, at that point where God and man meet and 
become one." Dr. Channing always discriminated 
carefully, in his thoughts and words, material nature 
from human nature. " The cosmic forces are the un- 
conscious manifestation of the divine mind, but love 
and free choice, the laws of human nature, are con- 
scious manifestations of its spontaneity." Dr. Chan- 
ning never urged miracles as proofs of Christian- 
ity. He said that at the present day they were more 
apt to produce scepticism than faith; people who 
believed them generally did so because they believed 
in Christianity, rather than believed in Christianity 
because of the miracles. There was a profounder 
evidence of the truth of Christianity than material 
changes can be,' whether common or uncommon, and 
which we find in that growing apprehension of God 
that comes from sincerely living out Christ's love of 
man in all our relations with men. " Service to man," 
he used to say, "is the only real service of God. 
Eitual is not service to God, no not even with Moses. 
1 The scapegoat ' who carried off the sins of the great 
congregation, which the priest's words seemed to lay 
upon his back, was only an enacted metaphor to ex- 
press the truth that past sin, when it is repudiated and 
forsaken, is forgiven ; for Moses was careful to say that 
no individual partook of the remission by the scape- 
goat, who did not sincerely repent of his sins and 



188 REMINISCENCES' OF DR. CHAINING. 



leave them. Ritualism is the sincere language of 
men at a certain stage of their progress. It becomes 
a letter to Mil when rested in after ' the spirit makes 
all things new.' 'Your new moons and your Sab- 
baths, I hate them saith the Lord/ And yet there 
was a time when these symbols lifted the people out 
of their Egyptian darkness into the conception of a 
spiritual God and spiritual life with Him. 'The 
hour cometh and now is/ said Jesus, ' when neither 
in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem shall men 
worship the Father ; for God is a Spirit, and is to be 
worshipped in spirit and in truth.' " 

I am somewhat anticipating dates in reporting 
these words of Dr. Channing, but -not anticipating his 
thought. It was in the fall of 1825 that he first 
spoke to me on the subject of the Eesurrection, and 
we searched Wordsworth's poems to collect all the 
proofs, dwelt upon by the poet, of the supremacy 
of the spiritual over the material. The subject often 
came up in different connections, during all our ac- 
quaintance. On one point he was entirely consistent ; 
namely, that the arguments for the truth of Christian- 
ity, drawn from man's spiritual dignity and life, are 
of a higher caste and more convincing to the human 
intellect than the tradition of miracles ; and that 
spiritual evidence is a more profitable object of in- 
quiry than historical, though the latter cannot but 
exist. " In the apostles' time, the moral evidence of 
Christianity had not yet had time to accrue. But the 
apostles were to have a trial and a duty which re- 
quired a certainty beyond the reach of doubt." 

I remember a conversation between him and Dr. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 189 

Follen on this point, some years later, when Dr. Follen 
was speaking of Christ's walking on the water, and 
Peter's attempt and failure. The idea expressed by 
them both was, that the unfallen nature of Jesus 
gave him the same consciousness of dominion or free- 
dom from the drag downward of the material ele- 
ments, which in the beginning was declared to be the 
high destiny of the living soul breathed into Adam. 1 
That there was this essential superiority was to be the 
unquestioning faith of the apostles, if they were to 
take up his cross and conquer with it. This faith is 
ordinarily a slow growth ; £>ut they would need it at 
once to give them fortitude, before k would have 
time to grow by their own personal experience of the 
inward life. Hence J esus gave impulse to it peremp- 
torily, as it were, by showing in his own case that there 
is that within a living man which may annul even 
the cosmic force of gravity. Peter for the moment be- 
lieved, and would experience it in himself (which, by 
the way, shows that he regarded Jesus as a man like 
himself, except in degree of development). But the 
unwonted position robbed him of his self-possession ; 
and bodily sense took the place of that sudden ecstasy 
in which he had thrown himself into the water. Jesus 
exclaims, " Oh, why didst thou doubt ! " He evidently 
would educate Peter out of his impulses, and put him 
in immediate possession of the truth which would 
make his word sterling in Nature, like his own. They 
agreed that Jesus was obliged, by the circumstances 
of the case, to educate the apostles by wonder-signs, 
approaching them through the imagination instead of 
1 Gen. ii. 



190 



REMINISCENCES OE DR. CHAXXIXG. 



by the slower process by which experience gradually 
educates the common understanding. 

This conversation was in 1828, when they saw 
clearly what Frederic Denison Maurice brought out in 
his sermons in England within ten years of this very 
date ; namely, that the miracles or wonder-signs of the 
gospel history were not violations of Nature, but ful- 
filments of eternal laws of matter and mind ; not su- 
perhuman, but strictly speaking snper-natural. The 
revelation by Christ, Dr. Channing believed to be 
simply the dignity of human nature, which consists in 
being in the same relatiofi as God is, of essential su- 
periority to the unconscious cosmic forces, through his 
ever growing intelligence (knowledge being power) ; 
while to man he also is capable of self-emptying love. 
Dr. Channing's favorite expression for Christianity 
was, as I have said before, the spirit of martyrdom. 
Without the spirit of martyrdom he thought men 
could not preserve the dignity of human nature 
among the detoning trivialities of every-day life. 
He did not regard the spirit of martyrdom as a sad 
spirit, though in some connections it must of neces- 
sity be sad. Its normal state was joy, — the joy of 
childhood, as described by Wordsworth ; the joy of 
victory so constantly expressed by Paul amid all his 
tribulations, as the signal of the faithful. " Eejoice ! 
I say unto you, rejoice ! " was his watchword. 

It is quite necessary to enter into the ideas of Dr. 
Channing respecting the body, in order to understand 
his conception of the spiritual life. He did not think 
the body was the cause of sin, though so often the in- 
strumentality by which the sinning spirit was made 



REMINISCENCES OF DB. CHANNING. 



191 



manifest. He thought sin originated either in the 
stagnation or the perversion of the will, — that free 
force of life which ought to be made coincident with 
the activity of pure love ; pure love being co-operation 
with God, who loves purely, — that is, for the sake of 
the objects of his love. He liked to accumulate proofs 
of the fact that temperance in the exercise of the 
senses insures the greatest sensuous enjoyment; and 
that self-forgetting, generous dove never could be 
disappointing, nor, when once developed, could ever 
fail. Because it is communion of activity with God, 
it must needs be immortal; and in this was the 
full dignity of human nature, — the perseverance of 
the saints. With regard to the miracles of Christ, 
Dr. Charming often expressed himself very decidedly 
as believing them to be historical facts, on the testi- 
mony of the Evangelists ; but he thought it very 
important to admit that they could not be adduced as 
proofs of Christianity. They illustrate facts of ISTa- 
ture, and symbolize spiritual truths; and these are the 
proofs of th.eir authenticity. He thought the views 
expressed by William Law, in his " Spirit of Prayer,'' 
contained some important suggestions on the relation 
of spirit and body. " What is matter ? " he would 
frequently say; " may it not hold the same relation to 
God that our speech does to us ? and since we par- 
take of the creative nature of God, may not human 
spirit have an inherent power of transfiguring matter? 
•May not the transfiguration of Jesus perhaps prophesy 
some further developments of the human race on 
earth ? " He thought it was an important office of 
Jesus to exhibit what men may become, not only on 



192 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



the spiritual plane but on the natural. He is said to 
have communed with Moses and Elias visibly. He 
exhibited a power over his own body, in the resur- 
rection season, which neutralized the attraction of 
cohesion and of gravity, and yet preserved its ma- 
terial identity as a recognizable means of expression. 
But to believe in the miracles is no evidence of spirit- 
ual' life in the highest sense of the w T ord spiritual, 
which involves a moral intercourse with men that 
proves a spiritual intercourse with God, like as man 
has w T ith man. A person may belong fully to the 
Christian Church — be a part of Christ's mystic body 
— without believing in the miracles ; which is no 
more a spiritual act than to believe that the sun 
shines. Christ's mystic body was his character, his 
love, and goodness ; not the matter by which he was 
made visible to the senses, either before or after his 
resurrection." A most important relation of the be- 
lief in the Christian miracles, in Dr. Channing's eyes, 
was its bearing on our confidence in the veracity of 
the Evangelists, which was established, as he thought, 
on internal evidence of their honesty and good sense. 
"Writings so free from the moral weakness of self- 
laudation, witnessing to the presence of a character 
so unparalleled in its individuality and originality as 
Jesus, precluded," he used to say, " all question of the 
honest simplicity of these writers. If the miracles 
were not facts, they were wilful fictions. But to ad- 
mit the last," I once heard him say, " is to beg the 
question, to say the least," He had very carefully 
read the conjectures of Strauss and others of that way 
of thinking. He thought there might have sometimes 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 193 



been some play of credulous imagination; "for the 
Evangelists were men;''' and he believed that there 
was some merely symbolic expression of thought, 
often too literally interpreted. A natural explanation 
of the sudden appearance of food enough to feed the 
five thousand is suggested by the stated fact that the 
disciples had taken food with them for the day's jour- 
ney into the wilderness ; and others might have done 
the same thing. This fact of there being enough and 
to spare was brought out providentially, in order to 
rebuke the uneasy officiousness of the disciples, who 
had interrupted Jesus in the midst of his important 
discourse with this question of food. Then again, 
the piece of money found in the mouth of the fish 
was probably the price of it, which a fisherman could 
easily command. In both of these cases J esus gave 
a practical lesson, rebuking the faithlessness which 
weakly creates possible obstacles in our path when 
we are pursuing great aims. They were illustrations 
of his precept, " Seek first the kingdom of heaven and 
its righteousness, and all these things will be added 
to you." 

" So Huntingdon, in his ' Bank of Faith,' and many 
another, have shown the nature of the miracles which 
must needs attend men and women who consecrate 
themselves to the highest purposes of life, in this 
system of things provided by the living God for spir- 
itual ends. 1 But subtracting all that can be asked by 
the kind of criticism which is legitimate, there is 

1 Dr. Cullis's Home for consumptives in Boston and George 
Miiller's Orphanage in Bristol are supported by such perpetual 
miracles. 

13 



194 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

much that transcends ordinary human experience in 
the healing of disease and revival of life, which Jesus 
himself, in his message to John the Baptist in prison, 
declared to have taken place. I think an important 
truth is to be inferred from his claim of the power to 
cure the ' ills that flesh is heir to/ as well as to preach 
the cure of those of the mind, which can only be ef- 
fected by the concurrence of the free will of men. 
Jesus' power over the diseased and dead bodies of 
men suggests beneficent personal power to. be devel- 
oped hereafter in all, when the moral power of the 
race, as such, shall have got the better of the sin 
which is forever reproducing physical evil. We do 
not look enough on Jesus as 'the first-born of many 
brethren/ and so miss of the most inspiring truth. 
I cannot believe that the hopes and imagination of 
men go beyond the loving purposes of God. If the 
manifestation of the Christ were (as it seems to me 
the height of absurdity to think) a poetic creation of 
the unassisted human mind, it would be no less a 
revelation of what all men are destined to be in rela- 
tion to the material universe." Dr. Channing had no 
superstition about, the Evangelical narratives, which 
were, he thought, to be read and interpreted like any 
other writings of men ; and he gave me a manuscript 
written by the late Judge Parsons of Boston, so re- 
nowned for his judicial opinions, harmonizing, by the 
principles of legal interpretation, the discrepant tes- 
timony of the Evangelists, concerning the fact of the 
resurrection. I have this paper still, and should be 
tempted to insert it here, but that its arguments, in- 
volved with much more evidence of the veraciousness 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



195 



of the Gospel narrative, are to be found in some 
" Sermons on the Eesurrection," — a posthumous pub- 
lication of the late Dr. Eliphalet Nott, which I would 
commend to the common sense, not only of lawyers 
but of all men. The tract societies, both Unitarian 
and Orthodox, could not do a better service in their 
way than to republish, in form for wide distribution, 
this masterly judicial examination and interpretation 
of the facts alleged by the Evangelists, and taken for 
granted by Paul, who was " brought up at the feet of 
Gamaliel." It is certainly quite unparalleled in the 
annals of mankind, as Dr. Channing often said, that 
eight or ten men should have suffered lives and deaths 
of martyrdom to attest facts that they were so slow 
to admit at first ; and which were so utterly opposed 
to all their prejudices that Jesus himself, though "he 
spake as never man spake," and " with authority " as 
they themselves said, could not by his words over- 
come it. The utter and complete change of character 
between the day they " forsook him and fled" and 
the day after his Ascension, can be accounted for by 
nothing less than by the facts to which they them- 
selves ascribed it, and which proved to them that the 
life before and after death is an uninterrupted life, lived 
only in different mansions of the Father's house. 

But my purpose in this chapter was to give two 
more of Dr. Channing's sermons on the text, " The 
hour cometh and now is," etc., preached in the winter 
of 1825-26, in December. He beg;an with saying 
that he had preached on this text before, but he had 
more to say on so fruitful a theme. " At the time of 
Jesus' advent, superstition about the place of worship 



196 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



and external circumstances connected with it had 
superseded worship itself among Jews and Gentiles 
equally. His coming was to show that the place of 
worship was indifferent, — its spirit only important. 
Not yet, however, had the lesson been, fully received. 
Look at the Eoman Catholics in our own land, for it 
is not necessary to go to the Indus or the Ganges : our 
holy water, holy places, holy attitudes, holy dresses, 
show that the majority of nominal Christians have a 
great deal yet to learn of the genius of "their religion. 

" Christianity, free as Nature and unconfined as 
God, has the one object of uniting the soul to God by 
moral development. It sweeps all peculiar sanctity 
from places ; there is not one place on earth more 
sacred than another. Wherever a duty can be per- 
formed, there is the temple and the acceptable sacri- 
fice. This truth was taught in the circumstances of 
Jesus' birth. They proved the emptiness of those 
things which we value so unduly. Had it been left 
for us to choose how the Son of God should have 
entered the world he came to save, we should proba- 
bly have selected the temple at Jerusalem for his 
birthplace, and the high-priest in sacrificial robes to 
present the holy infant to the subject world ! But 
how different was God's choice ! In a stable, not the 
holy temple, the Saviour made his humble and peace- 
ful entrance into the world he came to save ; to a 
manger were the wise men guided by that single star ; 
and Mary, with no ornament but her meekness and 
purity, was entrusted with his holy infancy. 

" It is not so correct to say, perhaps, that Christianity 
has swept sanctity from all places as that it has con- 



. REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 197 

ferred it upon all places. It forbids us to confine 
omnipresence to particular places, because it recog- 
nizes God everywhere. The church is not more sacred 
than the dwelling-house ; not that a church is not 
sacred, but that a dwelling-house is sacred. God is 
present there, should be served there ; the sacrifices 
should be as fervent and more frequent there than in 
the church. No place on earth is more sacred than 
home ; there is sanctity in the marriage-bond, sanctity 
in the parental and filial relations, — as much reason 
for the consecration to God of home as of a church. I 
have no desire to diminish a natural reverence for 
the house of prayer ; but when you go over your own 
thresholds I w 7 ould you should feel an equal reverence, 
and make your home a scene of self-forgetting, self- 
sacrificing affection. Nor is this all. Your places of 
business are also as sacred as home and the church. 
God is to be worshipped there by an upright, fair 
dealing. The man of enlightened piety does not feel 
more reverence for the forms and ceremonies of the 
church than for the manner in which he buys and 
sells. 

" It may be answered that the consecration of par- 
ticular places is founded in our nature : patriotism 
hallows the spot where the martyrs to their country 
died; it has its Thermopylae and Marathon — yon- 
der hall and yonder heights, to the south and the 
north. 1 All this is right and reasonable ; for patri- 
otism is limited and local. But religion has no limits, 
its sacred places are wherever duty can be done. I 
would ask my most careless hearers, those who judge 

1 Faneuil Hall, Bunker Hill, and Dorchester Heights. 



198 • REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



of a sermon by some single sentence they may have 
carelessly heard, not to misunderstand me. I re- 
joice in the multiplication of churches in our me- 
tropolis. I would even recommend an improved 
style of architecture. I agree with those who say 
ornament cannot confer sacredness, but I do not 
agree with any who say that material beauty is in- 
jurious. On the contrary, if some forms are so in 
harmony with our feelings as to produce delightful 
emotions not alien to religion, I would press them 
into her service. The human mind delights to diffuse 
itself, and mould matter into forms congenial to its 
sublime conceptions, — hence this divine art of archi- 
tecture. It will improve with society, and grow 
more simply grand with its purification. But grand 
as the temples men . may raise to God, there is a 
grander temple built by the Deity himself, whose 
portals are open night and day, dedicated on that 
glorious morning when the sons of God shouted for 
joy ; whose lights, unlike these feeble lamps, are the 
sun, and moon, and stars ; whose organs are thunder, 
winds, and ocean. In this vast temple Jesus sat on 
a mountain and taught. The truly enlightened Chris- 
tian feels that Nature is the only temple worthy of 
God, and a whole life of service the only acceptable 
oblation. He who does not feel the universe is God's 
temple has not learned the purposes of creation. . Alas ! 
these purposes are yet to be learned. The man is 
deemed extravagant who admires and loves Nature as 
the shadowing forth of omniscience and omnipresence. 

"I have used the words sacred and holy too 
loosely, perhaps, in this discourse. • Strictly speaking 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 199 

there is nothing below God sacred, save the human 
soul where God proposes to take up his abode. I 
often feel it impossible to restrain my indignation 
when I find a crafty priesthood breaking down the 
spirit of man and bowing it in abject reverence be- 
fore a particular building, a relic, a block of wood 
made into a crucifix, a piece of bread, and teaching 
him these are more' sacred than his own nature. 
The apostles speak of no temple of God but man's 
soul. The beauty and sacredness of the universe 
arise from its corresponding to the soul, and being 
the means of its intellectual development. 

"How sacred must be that soul for which such an 
instrument is created ! Keep its shrine consecrated 
and pure ; allow no evil spirit to pollute it ; banish 
from it all evil thought, and when the mind turns in 
upon itself, let it find ' holiness to the Lord ' WTitten 
on its walls, the flame of devotion a burning and 
shining light upon its altar. And the more we feel 
the sublimity, the vast importance of our own souls, 
the more we shall respect those of our fellow-men. 
' For love is the fulfilling of the law,' — ' God is 
love.' " 

On January 8, 1826, he preached again from the 
same text, which he now made use of to show that 
no peculiar sanctity could attach to persons any 
more than places, since Christ's revelation had conferred 
the same upon all, — had banished a laarrow priest- 
hood by making all Christians priests ; for, he said, 
it was worthy of remark that the apostles never used 
the word except to apply it to the whole body of the 
Church. It is true that pastors and teachers had been 



200 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



appointed by apostles in the Christian Church ; • but 
• these were very different from priests. He then gave 
his idea of priests, — showed how out of place human 
priests were, -when the religion to be administered 
was spiritual, not ritual, and had its sanction in the 
unseen world, and not, like the Jewish institutions, 
in this world. He showed that to wield spiritual 
power positively was too great a trust for men liable 
to be insensible to its nature, insensible to the feel- 
ings and rights of humanity. The Inquisition proved 
this. Now by the Scriptures of the New Testament 
nothing is allowed to the pastor that is not allowed 
to the people ; the ministers were not spoken of as 
more dignified and holy by their office than the peo- 
ple by their relation, and by this very thing Christian 
ministers were elevated as far above priests as spirit 
is above matter. The only tie between pastor and 
people is instruction given and received ; nor does the 
pastor monopolize this. Every private Christian is 
the minister of religion in his sphere. The pastor's 
power consists solely in the truth of which he is the 
organ, and those who are taught have a perfect right 
and it is their duty to examine it, and " proving all 
things hold fast that which is good/' The dignity of 
the pastor's office arises from his addressing free 
minds, and that he does not pour thoughts into pas- 
sive recipients who have not generosity of spirit or 
strength of intellect to doubt. His business is to 
awaken, animate, and excite, not hoodwink the intel- 
lect ; and in return to receive animation, intelligence, 
and happiness from the free action on him of his 
people's minds and affections. There was no power 



KEMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 201 



of one "human being over another which was not con- 
temptible beside that which arises from superior in- 
sight and virtue. The bishop, the cardinal, the pope, 
all the poor pageantry of a bygone age, sink into 
nothing beside it. Death may not break, but will 
confirm and elevate this great friendship. We can- 
not but believe that the soul in bliss will recognize 
with a thrill of fervent delight the beings to whom it 
owed any religious impressions. This tie is the only 
one a Christian pastor can wish to form. " God" he 
ejaculated, " give me this hold on my people ! " But 
what says history and experience of the priesthood 
of the Christian clergy ? Has not this system been 
. sufficiently tried, and with effects that might bring it 
into suspicion ? He enlarged in this part upon the 
facts of ecclesiastical history. 

He then pointed out the intrinsic disadvantages of 
the marked distinction between clergy and laity. On 
no one set of men was more obligation than on another 
to obey the precepts of religion and worship God, 
and the laity could not shift their religious duties 
upon their pastor as if he could do them for them. 
That led to narrow views of providence, as if the 
common duties of life were abstracted from the re- 
ligious life, business were essentially irreligious, and 
things necessary to the well-being of social and politi- 
cal man not a part of God's providence for unfolding 
the soul. There was nothing in the nature of secular 
employments, therefore, to preclude the ministers of 
religion from engaging in them. But he would not 
be misunderstood. He did not want to send the pas- 
tors of churches into secular business ; not that they 



202 REMINISCENCE^ OF DR. CHANNINGi 



were a whit too holy to freight ships, sell goods, etc. 
Doubtless as holy men as they could be and were 
engaged in just such business ; but the pastors of 
churches had something else to do. He should be 
sorry to see a pastor of a church on Exchange for 
precisely the same reason he should be sorry to see the 
mother of a family there. " There is growing reason 
why the teachers of religion should be exempted from 
temporal cares. They no longer have a creed ready 
made to their hands which they are dogmatically to 
enforce ; they may no longer dole forth low, narrow, 
never-altering views of religion week after week. 
Once they had time for secular business ; now nobler 
conceptions and higher views of religion obtain, and 
seclusion, quiet, leisure, a great, never-ceasing culture 
of mind is necessary to find in Revelation something 
new, to meet the new questions continually asked by 
the spirit of the times." 

I have somewhat lost the connection of the close, 
but I remember he said : " My friends, if I thought 
I had the monopoly of the business of Christian in- 
struction, I should feel myself infinitely raised above 
the wisest and best of you, whatever may be your 
stations and honors. This precious deposit would out- 
weigh the universe ! But I have no such monopoly. 
Christian ministry is committed to you as well as to me. 
You may not know it ; you may not recognize your 
obligations, — but your neglect does not absolve you 
from your duty. It is committed to you to improA'e, 
and bestow upon others. If you neglect to do so, you 
desert your duty as truly as if a preacher were to 
desert his pulpit. It is not the office and place, but 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



203 



the work which constitutes the sanctity. The work 
may be clone in the chair of the private Christian as 
well as in the pulpit of a church." 

Some years after the above record was made (as late 
as the year 1832), he preached two sermons, I forget 
on what text, but the subject was . that there are no 
peculiarities in Christianity, — that is, that the ideas 
of Christianity are precisely the ideas of Natural Re- 
ligion ; that each and all of them are written on the 
universe. Yet for Christ's coming w 7 e should be grate- 
ful, because by his living as well as speaking those 
ideas, they were brought into the sphere of other 
than philosophers, — of people who learn through 
example, and live by sympathy and affection, which 
Jesus excites in men of all ages. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 



T GIVE the first letter I had from Dr. Charming, 

because it is so characteristic in its disinterested 
consideration of the interests of others. Its occasion 
was my being called into Boston, to keep a school 
gathered for me by my friend Eliza Lee Cabot (after- 
wards Mrs. Follen), who wished me to educate a niece 
of her own : — 

Boston, April 25, 1826. 

My Dear Miss Peabody, — On 'Saturday I expressed to 
you the pleasure with which I shall put Mary under your 
care. I have feared since that you might interpret my 
language into advice to begin a school here. ' The truth is 
that I was thinking only of the good that Mary might re- 
ceive. I feel that I ought not to sway your decision at 
all ; for I am quite unable to judge of your prospects. 
Consult only your own sense of duty, and act on the infor- 
mation you can gather from those who know more of the 
wants and feelings of the town than I do. You know that 
you have my best wishes, but let not these weigh with you 
in making a decision which is to affect your interest- so 
deeply. 

Your sincere friend, 

W. E. Chaining. 

Accepting this position brought me into a seven- 
years relation with some twenty children (at one time 
increased to forty ), and kept me in an intercourse 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 205 



with Dr. Charming on the subject of education of the 
most intimate character. 

At that time Sunday-school instruction was just ex- 
citing the attention of the Unitarian churches. It had 
been adopted in a few of them only; it being a ques- 
tion with many parents, whether, it was safe to entrust 
the religious education of children to any teacher who 
might chance to be persuaded to undertake this most 
delicate of human duties. I found however that there 
was a Sunday-school organized in Federal Street, and 
that there was a meeting of its teachers once a week. 

Dr. Channing shared the doubt respecting the value 
of Sunday-schools, except for the purpose for which 
they were "first instituted m England, — which was 
to teach poor children to read who were not sent 
to school in the week days. The object of giving 
religious instruction was now the motive; and he 
thought that it, like all other education, was lacking 
in a method proper to awaken the mind's own action, 
and defend it from passively receiving the thinking of 
others : this was especially to be deprecated when the 
thinking was religious. He was very clear in his de- 
cision that young girls and young men, whose own 
minds were still confused and uncertain with respect 
to first principles, and who were undisciplined in 
spiritual life, were not to be trusted with the direction 
of the religious thoughts of children ; for they did not 
know how not to be dogmatic. The eight teachers 
of the Federal Street Sunday-school were members 
of his church, and of mature minds. Among them 
were Mr. George Ticknor, Miss Susan Cabot, and 
Miss Eliza Lee Cabot ; all of them, without any 



206 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



impulse from him, had spontaneously undertaken the 
work. These met weekly, to consult together, and 
with him how to do it. Though I did not then 
undertake a class, he invited me to attend the meet- 
ings. The plan of meeting was very simple. The 
teachers independently made their own plan of pro- 
cedure, all of them, however, teaching from the New 
Testament ; and they would in turn tell what passage 
was to be their next Sunday's lesson, and ask what 
the others thought should be made of it. Dr. Chan- 
ning did not assume any authority over the minds of 
the teachers, but rather took it for granted that they 
all were studying with him to discover what were the 
motives of piety and humanity that moved Jesus 
Christ, in all that he said and did and suffered, to lead 
men " of their own selves to judge what was right," and 
feel and act accordingly. In this great work of re- 
demption Dr. Channing thought all Christians ought 
to be engaged personally, and teach the children that 
it was the business the Father had given them 
also to do. He continually guarded the teachers from . 
imposing anything to be believed ; but wanted them 
so to explain the action and precepts of Jesus, that 
the children would discover and spontaneously be- 
lieve the truth. His conception of human nature, and 
of the superficialness of evil in the era of childhood, 
gave him confidence that the moral imperative of con- 
science would be effective, and that the imagination 
of children would give the true meaning to the name 
" Son of God " applied to the son of man. He thought 
it most important, therefore, to let the life of Jesus on 
earth tell its own story to the childish heart ; and that 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



207 



none of our abstractions should weaken the simifi- 

o 

cance of " the Word made flesh." Instruction should 
be given respecting the circumstances of the nation ; 
the position of the Jews with respect to the Eomans ; 
Oriental manners and customs of speaking, and per- 
haps the past history of the Jews ; the attempts of 
the patriarchs, lawgivers, kings, and prophets of Israel 
to keep the people to the love of God and man, so far 
as they knew it themselves. 

But there was a great deal of discussion in regard 
to the expediency of using the Old-Testament history. 
Miss E. L. Gabot was vehement against using the Old 
Testament at all ; and considering her mode of inter- 
preting the Hebrew idiom she could very cleverly 
defend her view, that it outrages the moral sentiment 
and conscience of childhood. 

I was very eager with my thought that the imagi- 
nation* of childhood could seize and appropriate the 
truths symbolized by the biographical narratives and 
general scope of the Hebrew history, and especially the 
poetry of the Old Testament ; and maintained that it 
was very desirable that the upper classes at least of 
the Sunday-school should be taught how to extract 
the universal truths which were the kernel of the 
Hebrew nuts. The general vote went however against 
using the Old Testament, and Dr. Channing acquiesced, 
because, as he said to me in private, there was enough 
illustration of religious truth in the story of Jesus ' 
life to occupy fully the few hours of the year devoted 
to the Sunday-school ; and the possession of this full 
truth would enable the children by and by "to judge 
of their own selves " between the transient errors and 



208 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



permanent truths contained in the Hebrew scriptures. 
He very frequently .quoted those words of Jesus, as 
containing an intimation never to be lost sight of, — 
" The Father giveth to the son of man to have life in 
himself." Any religious teacher, in however large 
measure he received the spirit, had authority, he said, 
only so far as he had the truth. The great proof to 
him that Moses had a measure of divine authority 
was in the fact that he himself disclaimed expressly 
having unmeasured authority; that he recognized that 
times might come to his nation, when his constitution 
would not suit them ; for he says, " In that day, 
another prophet, like unto me, shall be raised up 
unto you." The symbolic ritual Moses presented as 
a divinely sanctioned expression of the Divine Will 
was a magnificent expedient for the education of 
the poetical Hebrews; but Moses did not impose 
it as coming from without, but as a translation 
into the vernacular of the Hebrew conscience; the 
practical operation of the Eternal Spirit in every 
man. "For this commandment which I command 
thee this day, it is not far off. It is not in heaven, 
that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to 
heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it 
and do it 1 ' Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou 
shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for us and 
bring it unto us, that we may hear it ? But the ward 
is very nigh unto thee : in thy mouth and in thy heart, 
that thou mayest do it." 1 

One great value of the Old-Testament history, 
I have heard Dr. Charming say, is the light it 

1 Deuteronomy xxx. 11-14. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 209 

throws upon the finite side of human nature; not 
merely its infirmity, but its positive power to antago- 
nize the Divine Will, which is however alive within 
it, manifested as retributive when not creative law. 
It is a revelation of man's freedom, even to the 
point of rebellion, and the moral nature of God's om- 
nipotence. Its prophets saw enough of God to realize 
men's pexpetual falls, involving national catastrophes 
which were moral judgments. But the specific reve- 
lation of the New Testament is not so much of the 
falls of men into sin, which it quietly takes, for 
granted as an admitted fact of all human history, 
as it is of the revelation manifest in the holy human 
life, the generously accepted death, the resurrection 
and ascension of Jesus Christ, which are to be pre- 
sented to children as facts of history; and we may 
trust God and Nature that these facts will be under- 
stood and truly judged of the more simply they are 
stated, and the less of our own limited views we min- 
gle with them. Very young children, Dr. Channing 
thought, ought never to be sent to Sunday-school. He 
did not send his own, who were then under seven years 
of age. He dreaded everything parrot-like in devo- 
tion, and deprecated that any religious habits should 
become perfunctory. " True worship is spontaneous," 
he said ; " nothing should ever be done to force chil- 
dren to worship ; but we should take advantage of any 
seasons of overflowing joy, or of tender penitence for 
little peccadilloes which chequer their childish moral- 
ities, to make known to them our own assurance of 
being in a Heavenly Father's house to be educated by 
Him to self-control, love of the neighbor, and rever- 

14 



210 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



ence for truth, by means of the trials of every-day 
life ; and they will infer that they are in the same 
relation to Him. Such instruction can only be given 
personally, and were best given to little children by 
their mothers, though sometimes the mother failed 
through illness, death, or want of sufficient character." 

He .entirely approved my plan of having no regular 
religious exercises in my school (for it was my habit 
to have only private, personal communications with 
my pupils on the application of religious principles, 
as I saw their' individual personal needs on special 
occasions) ; for he thought as I did, that religion must 
be the individual's communion with God, and that 
then only could the social worship become vital. The 
sentiment of religion could not be brought into play 
peremptorily, but only by personal sympathy with 
the individual need, and by filling the imagination 
w r ith histories of moral heroes and saints, and espe- 
cially with the history of Jesus Christ's " conversation 
in the world " by word and deed. He used to say 
that " high spiritual living in the world, but not of it, 
should not be made to seem a visionary thing." He 
w^as greatly pleased with my mother's plan (of which 
I told him) of telling us the noble deeds, generosities, 
and self-sacrifices for the sake of integrity and benev- 
olence of. persons in our own immediate circle, or as 
told in ordinary history, and cherishing our spontane- 
ous enthusiasms for excellent persons whom W 7 e knew 
personally. This he thought would help to make 
more realizable the perfect self-sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ, of which his death was but the last act ; the 
full expression of that disinterested love which healed 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 211 

the sick and gave hope of moral light to those he met 
who were depressed by sin. "As Socrates brought 
philosophy clown from heaven to earth, so Jesus 
Christ brought the Holy Spirit into the daily life." 

Among the expositions Dr. Channing made at the 
teacher's meetings, I remember one .on the Prodigal 
Son, which was characteristic of all. While he ad- 
mitted that a general application on the various 
planes of life might be made both of parables and 
acts, he said they always involved first principles 
which are eternal; but he thought it important al- 
ways to find out what were the more immediate 
relations of the words or deeds. The whole New- 
Testament narrative was in his view symbolical ; but 
it w T as no less irrefragable fact on the historical 
plane. " All life," he would say, " is symbolical, and 
therefore to be looked on as illustrating ' God with 
us/ What then did Jesus mean to convey to his 
immediate hearers, by the parable of the Prodigal 
Son ? I think he meant to state the case of the Jew 
and the Gentile, in their several ways of sinning. 
The elder son was no less delinquent than the prod- 
igal, and more dangerously so; for. his sin w T as a 
self-righteous, haughty inhumanity, — a subtler devil 
than the profligacy which sooner provokes the retri- 
bution of nature and brings the sinner ' to himself ' 
and to repentance. The subtler devil required the 
stern personal rebuke of his father ; it was the arch- 
enemy that in penal blindness crucified Christ in 
historical fact, and is still the rampant Anti-Christ, 
who would rule — not serve — in Heaven. It is the 
special enemy that Christ came to fight, and, by ac- 
cepting the cross, to overcome by convincing of sin." 



212 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



It seems to me, as I remember this and his 
other expositions of the ISTew Testament, that Dr. 
Channing would have accepted with great delight 
Professor Seeley's "Ecce Homo/' The commentary, 
in that remarkable book, on the scene with the 
woman taken in the act of adultery is thoroughly 
in Dr. Channingfs mode of looking at Jesus Christ's 
life; and he certainly did hold that Jesus' work in 
the world was to inspire the " Enthusiasm of Human- 
ity" in all men and women. And. with respect to 
the religious education of children, I have been im- 
pressed by my last twenty years' study of Friedrich 
Eroebel, that the idea of the latter in the child's be- 
ing gently brought to the consciousness of his prime- 
val relation to God, while his relations to Xature and 
fellowship with fellow-creatures are worked out by a 
life of self-activity, under wise and loving human 
guidance, is just the ideal of Dr. Channing, who only 
lacked Froebel's genius of practical application. He 
was always saying to me : " True education is bring- 
ing out the innate faculties of children into actual 
exercise, not tormenting their brains with the abstrac- 
tions of other minds. Education is a much profounder 
thing than inculcation by words." He anticipated 
Professor Agassiz in saying that a word on the lips, 
before the thing or thought which it signifies was in 
the mind, is an injury to that growing organism;' 
for the mind is fed by natural and spiritual substance 
alone, though it must needs have words immediately 
afterwards clearly to embody and to communicate 
thought to other minds for intellectual life and joy. 
Dr. Channing died in 1842, three years after Froebel 



REMINISCENCES OF DB. CHANNING. 213 



made the first practical attempt, which he called a 
kindergarten, in Brandenburg. I often think, as I 
remember his words, and see their whole scope better 
now than I did when they were uttered, with w T hat 
joy he would have accepted this new instrumentality 
of human progress, and how earnestly he would have 
spoken, written, and worked to universalize it. 
. My letters to Mrs. Sullivan and to Mrs. Guild of 
Brookline during the years 1826-28 are full of these 
conversations about education, which I am only too 
much tempted to write out in full, for they seem to 
myself so interesting and instructive as they " grew 
like the grass " out of our own daily life. 

In . the course of time the teacher's meetings 
changed, other people pressed in, and expositions of 
passages of the New Testament gave place to general 
topics of conversation, laid over from meeting to 
meeting ; so that Dr. Channing's large " study " was 
filled literally to overflowing. It was not till 1827, 
perhaps, that Miss E. L. Cabot brought Dr. Follento 
one of these meetings. This gentleman was one of 
the pupils of the German Jahn, and had led the party 
of those German University students who endeavored, 
in the spirit of liberty, to arouse the German nation- 
ality in 1816. Together with the Wesselhoefts, Dr. 
Beck, and others, he had compromised himself in 
favor of the liberty of the Greeks. Some of these 
gentlemen were made state prisoners ; some, and Dr. 
Follen among the number, driven to take refuge, first 
m Switzerland, where he became Lecturer on Civil 
Law at the University of Berne, while Dr. Wessel- 
hoeft became Demonstrator of the Anatomy of the 



214 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



"Eye. A demand being made for Dr. pollen by the 

Prussian government, the University begged him to 
leave for America, which he did ; but not till after 
having proved, in a great Plea 'before the Court of the 
Canton, that the University as well as the : Cantonal 
government had an inalienable right to protect him, as 
was formally adjudged. Nevertheless he and the 
rest relieved them of the embarrassment and danger 
of an encounter with the formidable kingdom of 
Prussia, and came to New T York, where Dr. Pollen 
and Dr Beck were hospitably entertained by the 
Sedgwick family, who gave them letters of introduc- 
tion to the Cabots of Boston, and to the Faculty of 
Harvard University, where eventually they both be- 
came Professors. 

Miss Cabot did not know but Dr. Pollen was a 
German Ideologist-; nevertheless she brought him to 
one of the meetings at Dr. Channing's, as the best 
hospitality she could offer an intellectual man. The 
subject of the evening was the Death of Christ, its 
significance and influence. It had already occupied 
several evenings ; and at one moment during that 
evening, when there was a pause, Dr. Channing said 
to Dr. Pollen : " What do they say, Sir, on this subject 
in your country ? " Dr. Follen, who was very modest, 
thus unexpectedly addressed, after a moment's pause 
said : " I do not know that I can express myself per- 
fectly on so sublime a subject in your language. In 
my country, of course, there are all opinions. In the 
reaction from the French wars, the atheism which was 
so wide-spread in the eighteenth century in Europe, 
and since, has given place to a great activity of mind 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 215 



on religious topics ; and to a revival of Christianity 
as a philosophy as well as a religion. When I was 
a boy in Hesse Darmstadt, where my father was in 
office corresponding to that of your civil judges, . the 
cultivated society was decidedly atheistic and utterly - 
ignorant of the New Testament! When I came to 
be examined for entrance [I do not remember whether 
he said for the University or for some other Institution 
of Education], I w 7 as put into a room entirely empty, 
and out of which I could not look, with a written 
question to which I was required to write an answer. 
It was, ' How can a man die for a cause ? ' or, rather, 
4 For what motives will a man give away his life ? ' 
For a time my mind was utterly a blank. At last, 
I began to think what was implied in the fact that 
effort produced thought more or less true. Did it not 
imply that finite mind is in a certain vital relation to a 
Fountain of mind, to which it can aspire and thereby 
realize an inspiration of truth ? This growth into truth, 
which is a principle of the mind in its effort, does 
it not prove a Father of Spirits in living relation with 
us ? Thus I seemed to discover a Living God, and 
that he was my Father, though I did not at the mo- 
ment put these truths into so many w T ords for myself. 
But certainly it was the primal act of Faith. At 
once, with an access of energy, I turned my attention 
to . the subject given me to write on. Was not this 
effort prayer, and the answer thereto ? For my mind 
ranged at once through history, and I found that acts 
of self-devotion, the giving up of life for country, for 
friends, for one's own glory, and — as in the case of 
the North American Indians — even from the ignoble 



216 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



desire to humble an enemy, were acts of men at the 
very summit of their energies, and implied a duality 
of nature which was the distinctive human character- 
istic. No animal voluntarily gives up life. • What 
was this that stood up over the animal life (that we 
certainly share in its instinct of self-preservation), and 
in sovereign power gave it away ? Was it the gift or 
the giver ? Was not the giver a deathless person ? 
So I wrote my paper, and it was a pivotal act of my 
life. I came out from that exercise another man. It 
was the consciousness of a spiritual birth ; and I be- 
came interested to examine and compare the religions 
of the world. The nucleus of the popular 'religioji I 
knew was a death, — the death of Jesus of Nazareth; 
and now I looked into the New Testament for the 
first time, and investigated the circumstances, and 
undertook to find out the motives and meaning, of 
the death of Christ. I came to see that the death 
of Christ is the only perfectly pure moral act in the 
history of mankind. It implies the conquest of every 
weakness and passion of human nature. It was from 
no passion for glory, no fond friendship for an indi- 
vidual or any number of individuals; not an act of 
patriotism merely : it was an act of pure love for 
humanity, when baffled benevolence and faith, for a 
moment, eclipsed the vision of the Father. This act 
of J esus Christ therefore becomes an infinite fountain 
of life for all mankind. No man who knows this fact 
can ever have an equal trial to his, for Jesus has gone 
before and illuminated the way. His infinite mag- 
nanimity and love Lave bridged the chasm between 
the finite and infinite, which, holding by his hand, 
the feeblest imagination can now leap." 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 217 

When he ceased to speak, there was profound si- 
lence in the room. It was by far the most remark- 
able thing that had been said. Dr. Channing did not 
speak, but unconsciously rose and pulled out his 
watch, and looked at it. The company seemed to 
understand that he wanted to be rid of them, and, 
with a general smile at his simplicity, they began to 
disperse. As soon as a path was clear between him 
and Dr. Follen, Dr. Channing darted through it, held 
out his hand (which Dr. Follen took), and said : " Sir, 
we must know each other better ! " And so, on the 
spot, I saw cemented one of the immortal friendships ! 
To the end of their lives, these two great Christians 
seemed to see eye to eye, to feel heart to heart, and 
to act in the same spirit for the same ends. 

There were several more conversations in Dr. Chan- 
ning's study, of a deeply interesting character, on the 
Christian doctrines, in which Dr. Follen and Dr. 
Channing became at last almost the only interlocu- 
tors. Everybody else was glad to be silent, to hear 
the great words they spoke on all themes. 



CHAPTER XV. 



T WILL throw together in this chapter a few more 
reminiscences of Dr. Channing in relation to the 
Sunday-schools, which I extract from my letters to 
Mrs. Sullivan written at the time (1826-27). 

On Friday evening, Dr. Channing spoke of establish- 
ing a children's public worship, — exercises adapted 
to their age, — an idea that had been suggested by 
Mr. Charles Barnard. He thought there were some 
objections to it. " Children are best addressed indi- 
rectly perhaps. They go to church with their parents, 
and get an idea of the universal obligation of social 
worship, and grow naturally into a sense of their own 
duty through their social instincts, without too much 
sense of compulsion. Their reverence for their pa- 
rents, whom they see worshipping, quickens and gives 
reality to their reverence for God. It gives them a 
sense of self-respect, also, to be left to their own 
spontaneity, which is important ; uncompelled wor- 
ship alone is in no danger of becoming perfunctory 
and hypocritical." 

He then asked, What is Christian faith ? — for that 
was the subject for the evening's conversation. "The 
word faith/' he said, "is commonly understood to mean 
the assent of the understanding to certain propositions ; 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 219 



but in this sense it is not confined to religion. It is 
mere belief, in which is nothing mysterious. But relig- 
ious faith is an act of the spiritual within us. It in- 
volves perhaps the act of the understanding ; but is it 
not something more ? Does it not imply a satisfaction 
of the heart, and determination of the will to obey 
truth loved as well as assented to ?" The question 
then arose, To what propositions does Christian faith 
imply assent ? " The answer of Philip to the eunuch is 
some guide : ' I believe that Jesus is the Son of God/ 
Still more the answer of Peter, which drew the com- 
mendation of Jesus, ' Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- 
Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, 
but my Father who is in heaven;' and this was ' Thou 
art the Christ, the Son of the living God/ Jesus 
himself never proposed any creed, or declared any 
systematic theology; all he said about God was to 
call him his ' Father, who was to be worshipped in 
spirit and in truth/ When he is comforting his dis- 
ciples, just before his death, he says, c I know that the 
Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved 
me, and believe that I came out from God/ Jesus 
being sent by the Father of spirits, as a Son, seems 
to be the objective point of Christian faith, whence 
the whole religion must spring in our souls. At the 
cross of Christ, the convinced centurion exclaimed, 
^Surely, this was the Son of God!"' He quoted 
other texts, and proposed that we should all make a 
collection of still others bearing on the point that 
J esus came out from the Father, and because the Fa- 
ther was in him he was the source of all moral and 
spiritual wealth to the human family. "Belief in 



220 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 

Jesus Christ's character, as the message of the Uni- 
versal Father to men, necessarily implies acceptance 
of his religion, for it is the germ of it." 

The question arose, Is it necessary to salvation from 
sin to believe this religion in all its completeness of 
development ? Dr. Channing said : " Light is thrown 
on this subject by considering the state of the dis- 
ciples, even after they were acknowledged believers. 
When Peter w T as blessed for the reality of his faith, 
did he understand and believe the whole of the Chris- 
tian religion, as he did when he wrote his Epistles ? 
Has any created mind ever fathomed the riches of 
the gospel of Christ ? The Christian religion is 
extensive enough to cover all the progressions of 
eternity, and consecrate them by its principles and 
precepts. But is not a man safe when he believes so 
earnestly as to inquire constantly and faithfully into 
what Jesus has taught, by precept and holy life, that 
he may conform his own life thereto ? It is quite im- 
possible to determine how much truth will serve to 
save an individual from sin. There is something in 
Christ's manifestation which can save every human 
soul, if his life is thoroughly studied from the first 
recognition he makes, of his mission at twelve years 
old. Some persons require more of it than others ; 
some errors are less harmful than others. One may 
conceive one or a few great principles so clearly as to 
be able to apply them to many and most diverse ex- 1 
igencies of his own moral life ; while another must be 
guarded on the right hand and on the left with all the 
precepts. Certainly the more the gospel is under- 
stood and digested in the mind, the more means are 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. C II ANN IN G. 221 

enjoyed of attaining Christian excellence ; but unless 
digested into power, mere knowledge of truth op- 
presses and paralyzes the moral nature. "We should 
not be anxious to believe a great deal. If we sin- 
cerely desire to be taught of Jesus, we shall find in 
his record what will save us, though it be not so much 
as another may find or need. An ordinary mind, un- 
instructed in contemporary history, will find some 
things obscure; but what is plain to an inquiring 
mind is just what that particular mind needs, — and 
it will give strength to acquire more, when more is 
requisite. We should not be too anxious. It is of 
no consequence whether we believe as others do, or 
alike, provided each of us strikes principles which, 
acted upon, serve us as sources of moral power, and 
peaceful and hearty communion with God. I think, 
however, all will find pretty much the same things 
in the Gospels, if all go to them without the asso- 
ciations of early false teaching, and without such fear 
of mistake as to weaken their minds and discour- 
age their hearts. All, doubtless, make mistakes on 
some points of Christian belief : there is but one point 
in which all Christians agree, and that is that Jesus 
is mediator between God and man, being both divine 
and human. When I have heard people insist that 
the point of Christian faith is to acknowledge Jesus 
to be the Supreme Being, I have asked them how 
they accounted for the fact that he never drew forth 
this acknowledgment from his disciples, but always 
stopped at their acknowledgment of his sonship, his 
messiahship, his being the anointed, — which is the 
meaning of the word Christ. His place in the hie- 



222 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



rarchy of natural existence is not important; good 
men come to different conclusions on that point. It 
is his relation to us, or ours to him, which is the es- 
sential thing. He says, ' If ye love me, keep my 
commandments/ These are those commandments on 
which he says c hang all the law and the prophets.' 
What we see in the Gospels we are bound to believe ; 
and it will be blessed to us according as we are sin- 
cere, single, and steady-minded. Some persons are 
not capable of entering into views which are neces- 
sary to the salvation of others. I may see a doctrine 
in the Scriptures which is a perfect dead-letter to 
another man ; his mind, at least at present, does not 
need that doctrine. It would be criminal however for 
me to reject it; I should be punished by being of less 
use to others, misleading them perhaps, and by feeling 
my character weaker than it would have been if for- 
tified by that truth. It is impossible for any one of 
us to judge for another as to what quantity of truth 
would save him from sinning. We may judge a man 
by the effects of his actions, but not by a perception 
of Ms ideas, still less by hearing the words of his 
creed. Many words mean nothing to him which 
mean a good deal to you or me. I apprehend that 
little approximation of mind is brought about by 
written creeds and confessions. There are varieties 
of interpretation which make these amount to very 
little ; and where there is not freedom of mind from 
fear, for the words to have a variety of interpretation, 
many of them become mere technics to most of those 
who use them. The very frequency with which they 
are conned over takes from their power of affecting 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



223 



the mind in any way whatever that edifies. But 
there is a great evil arising from the idea that there 
are certain things which it is necessary to believe in 
the Gospels; for when this quantity of faith is sup- 
posed to.be attained, there is a stop." 

He then asked if a great many people did not be- 
lieve as much at first as ever afterwards ; and if this 
was not the natural tendency of fixed creeds ? " Now 
this should not be/' said he ; " the mind is made for pro- 
gress, — to believe more and more ; to feel the light 
increasing. It develops more and more, and requires 
new views to answer to this development. If we 
find revelations open upon us as we proceed in self- 
knowledge, we may feel that our faith is at least correct 
enough to have in it the true principle of growth." 

Dr. Follen remarked that " the New Testament did 
not praise men for the extent of their faith in point 
of knowledge, but for their degree of faith, for the strong 
determination of will it produced. This degree made 
it a moral trait ; and such it was, when spoken of as 
a subject of praise." He said "a man might go to the 
New Testament, and yet, from some defect of intel- 
lect, with the best will in the world, not discern even 
the fact that Jesus was the medium of all moral 
truth. Another man, with no will to obey, might 
from the soundness of his intellect exercised upon 
the history of the world, and the fact of the influence 
of Christianity on society, assent to this truth, and 
yet be criminally deficient in active, effectual faith, 
while the former is not a subject of blame." 

" But the former is not a Christian ? " said Dr. 
Channing. 



224 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



" Certainly not," replied Dr. Follen. 

" This starts another question/' said Dr. Channing. 
" What are the grounds of faith ; and what is the 
process in men's minds of acquiring Christian faith ? 
Undoubtedly it is difficult to come to any conclusion 
in many of those cases where belief is hereditary ; yet 
even in these, may it not be possible to trace out how 
and when hereditary faith became the living and 
operative principle in the life ? How does religion 
begin ? There does seem something anterior to the 
reception of the object of Christian faith: c No man 
cometh unto me, except the Father draw him ; 9 what 
is this, — what is the ground of faith ? " As no one 
answered, he proceeded to ask : " Is it not the corre- 
spondence of our Saviour's character and precepts to 
all that is best within us ; to those feelings and ideas 
which we feel to be at the same time the most inte- 
rior and the noblest part of us ? " 

Mr. Gannett here said : " Do you not, Sir, overrate 
the moral sentiment and sensibility of men ? I ap- 
prehend that amid the cares and tumult, the crowd 
of sensations which constitute most men's conscious- 
ness, there is little chance of the moral sentiment 
growing so strong, and the moral sensibility so acute, 
as of itself to impel the search after the object of 
Christian faith." 

" Perhaps so," said Dr. Channing ; " but it seems 
to me that all men have periods when reflection will 
come ; and with reflection must ever come the ideals 
of rectitude and virtue. But what is your view of 
the subject, Sir ? " 

" I think," replied Mr. Gannett, " it must be expc- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 225 

rience of the effects of religion, rather than moral 
approbation of its beauty, or its correspondence with 
our inward images of truth and excellence, which 
makes men Christians. A man is in great suffering 
perhaps, and thrown on his own mind for resource ; 
he finds little to comfort him, and is aware that he is 
not as he should be. This state of tumult and moral 
disproportion indicates something wanting in him; 
some truth of Christianity then comes to his mind, 
by apparent accident perhaps, or by the suggestions 
of friends, or the recollections of his hereditary be- 
lief ; and this, from the necessity of his case, he ap- 
plies and dwells upon, and even acts upon in some 
degree. After a while he finds himself a better 
man, with clearer moral perception and more moral 
strength ; and from • this experience of its power 
he is led to explore the records of Jesus Christ's 
history, and finds the Christian religion." 

Dr. Channing replied that this was a powerful 
statement of a real case ; but, even in this case, he 
thought that the individual rises to the comparison of 
Christianity with his own renovated moral nature, 
and that their correspondence became the confirma- 
tion of faith where it was not the originator of it. 

I asked him if he thought every person's desire 
after Christianity was awakened by a strong percep- 
tion of moral disorder within ? It was undoubtedly 
the case, that the suffering arising from moral evil 
would open the mind to a reception of any truth pro- 
fessing to bring relief ; but is not the strong pressure 
of natural evil, sickness in children, and other calam- 
ities later in life, the stimulant to the acquisition of 

15 



226 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



something which we feel must be somewhere for our 
support, since there is implanted in the mind a deep 
conviction that the horror often induced by suffering 
is beneath its innate dignity, and consequently 
unnatural ? 

Dr. Channing's eye looking assent, I went on : 
" And are there not other stimulants beside the con- 
sciousness of suffering? Do not vivid and powerful 
delineations of heroic virtue and martyrdom, brought 
to our imagination early in life, awaken us to a con- 
sciousness of our own want of moral strength to 
through such scenes, and impel us to search for the 
principle which sustained those heroic persons, and 
consequently may sustain us ? Are there not as many 
ways for religion to begin, as many different grounds 
for Christian faith, as there are minds to receive it ? " 

" I think so," said Dr. Channing, " and I doubt not 
the deep desire of something to satisfy their capacity 
of loving has been the stimulant of many. But let us 
talk of this next time ; let Conversion be our sub- 
ject, and let us collect from our experience and obser- 
vation as many instances as we are able. Facts w 7 ill 
serve to develop this interesting subject, if they can 
be obtained ; though, from their nature, it is diffi- 
cult to obtain them I know." 

On the next Thursday evening I went again to Dr. 
Channing's, and Mr. Eussell went with me. One of 
the Sunday-school teachers asked some question about 
the Devil, and there was a full discussion of his per- 
sonalily. . Mr. Eussell stated the strong effect of the 
idea of his personality upon the poetical minds of 
the generality of the Scotch, and of the bad moral 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



227 



effect it produced upon the vicious class of the com- 
munity, who threw upon another than themselves 
the responsibility for evil. 

Then Dr. Channing entered upon the subject pro- 
posed the evening before, — the manner in which 
religion begins in the mind. He, however, first took 
up the subject of talking about religion as a per- 
sonal concern, its advantages and disadvantages. Mr. 
Eussell stated his strong objections to religious con- 
ferences as conducted among the Orthodox of this 
country, and said they were more objectionable than 
those conducted by the Orthodox of Great Britain ; 
and he made some statements of the differences. 
The difficulty here is, that we are more sensitive to 
other people's thought than to our own. Dr. Chan- 
ning spoke of the great advantage that it was to a 
minister to know the religious state of his hearers' 
minds, — to have them tell him how they felt. He- 
might then see whether he did them any good. He 
thought the social principle should be used for religious 
growth, and that we ought not to be afraid to use it 
to the rioht decree because one class of Christians 
abused it. He thought Unitarians were perhaps too 
much characterized as a class of Christians by a kind 
of religious reserve. Dr. Follen thought that it was 
quite necessary for the health of the character, that 
every individual should have some friend or friends 
on terms of intimacy so close that he could confess 
his faults, and be perfectly unreserved in his ex- 
pression of religious feelings ; but that this friend 
could not always be the minister, because such unre- 
serve must be only with intimate and dear friends, 



228 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



and to all the minister could hardly stand in this 
relation. 

They talked on this head till nine o'clock, when 
Dr. Channing adjourned us and the subject to the 
next meeting. 

On the next Thursday the first point discussed was 
how far fear operates in creating that sense of weak- 
ness from which comes the thirst for a consequent 
attainment of -religion ; whether the fear arises from 
sense of physical danger in this world or from moral 
want. Dr. Channing enlarged upon the character- 
istics of that religion which had its origin in the 
more generous principles of our nature, such as ad- 
miration of excellence, gratitude, etc. He said that 
some persons thought he dwelt too much on these as 
the ground of religion in his public preaching. Mr. 
Eussell told him that the most successful preaching 
in his native country was that of some Orthodox 
gentlemen of high standing, v\~ho had gone upon the 
plan of addressing the nobler rather than the baser 
principles of our nature, like Dr. Chalmers. It was 
decided that the religion founded on fear was in dan- 
ger of becoming a selfish religion. Fear is a base 
passion, and therefore in itself is no spring of the 
generous spirit of Christianity. Life must come from 
life, not want of life. Life is the courage of love that 
answers to God creating. Dr. Follen said that an idea 
of the need of religion would arise from sense of 
danger ; but a true moral search after religion springs 
from sense of moral want ; and the moral search is 
more pure in proportion to the absence of the selfish 
emotion of fear. He said his own religion sprang 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 229 



from a sense of the need of higher power for the 
accomplishment of his mind's purposes; and that 
religion developed in himself at the time when he 
began to measure his own mind with that which it 
was to accomplish : thence arose his first real prater, 
which was an effort of thought. He said, however, 
that the religion of different persons took character 
from their individualities ; the miseries of the war of 
1814 (according to the inferences he drew from his 
own observation) made the people of his native coun- 
try religious. Before that time religion was a subject 
not introduced among the more enlightened part of 
society as anything but a vast machine with which 
to operate upon the masses. Mr. Eussell said that 
he was brought up under the idea that religion was, 
as it were, a new power implanted in the mind ; that 
it was to come from abroad rather than to be sought 
out from within ; and that this impression deeply 
implanted produced that very effect, as soon as cir- 
cumstances began to operate on the mind in such a 
way as to show to itself its own inherent wants. He 
spoke of all the evil effects which he considered flow- 
ing from this mode of religious be^innino;. All agreed 
that circumstances must develop to the mind its own 
wants, and that it was possible and desirable for cor- 
rect views of the nature and end of religion to be 
given by education ; that the mind awakened by 
providential, though perhaps apparently trivial, cir- 
cumstances should have something to apply as a 
remedy to its newly realized wants. 

In the letter from which I have transcribed what 
follows, I say I have time only to give the ideas that 



230 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



Dr. Channing contributed to the conversation, not 
what others said. 

On Friday, May 27, the subject of the Sunday- 
school teachers' meeting at Dr. Channing's house was 
Matthew v. We began speaking of demoniacal pos- 
sessions. These had been explained to the children 
by all the teachers as insanity and other bodily 
diseases. Dr. Channing thought the Sermon on the 
Mount in Matthew, and that in Luke, were not 
the same. It was to be expected that J esus would 
repeat his instructions. If they were different re- 
ports of the same discourse, Matthew was the better 
authority, being the apostle and an ear-witness. He 
said that he hoped the teachers would not let the 
pupils repeat the beatitudes by rote. They should 
ask the children what was the contrary of poor in 
spirit, and lead them to see that it was a proud, or 
an arrogant, or a self-sufficient, or a conceited spirit. 
Eeferring them to the publican and the pharisee in 
the parable, they might be asked vjhich vms the poor 
in spirit. Then what is meant by the kingdom of 
heaven. They might be made to see that it did not 
mean the world beyond the grave, except so far as it 
is strictly spiritual. It means the reign of gospel 
principles in the heart. The statement is not theirs 
u will be," but theirs " is " the kingdom of heaven. 
He- thought the grand object of the teachers should 
be to give life and power to each moral precept, by 
embodying it in some fact of real life or history where 
its operation was evident, and then to ask some ques- 
tion so as to see if the pupil extracted the principle. I 
told him I thought this apprehension of the principle 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 231 

could not be tested by a question, for children appre- 
hend stories, allegories, and fads, when they cannot 
express their apprehension. He said that " an impres- 
sion which could not be expressed was not a thought. 
It could have no active power." He fancied I was 
too apt to trust that children apprehended beyond the 
limit of expression. This was probably an illusion. A 
real thought found expression, and the expression was 
always as clear as the thought. Children should not 
be credited with thoughts that they could not express. 
On the beatitude " Blessed are they that mourn/' I 
asked him if suffer -was not a better word than 
mourn? He said, "Certainly, the Greek word is 
TrevOovvres, the suffering." Miss Scollay said that 
the children might be taught that comfort would pro- 
ceed from the improvement in virtues which deep 
trial calls forth. Dr. Channing accepted this, and said 
no more, which disappointed me. 

On " Blessed are the meek," Mr. Ticknor said, " This 
is a repetition of the first beatitude." Dr. Channing 
said, " By no means ; the French translate the Greek 
word les doux, the sweet. Meekness is opposed to 
the angry passions and irritability ; but humility, to 
pride, arrogance, and self-conceit." " For they shall 
inherit the earth," Dr. Channing said, meant, per- 
haps, " They shall enjoy their earthly life, which 
the sweet-tempered do." He enlarged on this head 
very delightfully. Mr. Gannett said Campbell trans- 
lates earth " the land." Mr. Gannett did not believe the 
audience that Jesus addressed could enter into the 
refined speculations we had just been listening to ; 
but the reward of inheriting the land of Judea was 



232 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING, 



perfectly intelligible to them. The Jews were never 
meek, but stiff-necked and obstinate; and at the time 
this command was addressed to them they were 
breathing revenge on the Bornans, whose oppressions 
goaded their pride to the utmost. Dr. Channing said, 
" Your remarks are striking, and appear to me to have 
some foundation." I asked, " Do you think, Sir, the 
words and precepts of Jesus are to be interpreted by 
local circumstances, or admit of local limitations ?" 
Dr. Channing said, " They are, I think, always of uni- 
versal application ; and to seek the sense in which 
they may be applied to all men, everywhere, is the 
best rule of interpretation in the Sunday-school." 

On " hungering and thirsting after righteousness," 
Dr. Channing remarked that " righteousness is the 
only abstract term Jesus ever used, except ttuth. 
Righteousness means acting according to one's con- 
science." I asked if it did not " sometimes refer 
to the fulfilling of the ceremonial law ? " He 
said, "Undoubtedly; but it should not be confined 
to this. The larger sense, according to conscience, is 
the one in which Jesus uses it in most cases." He 
then enlarged on the " hunger and thirst," it being a 
favorite view of his that a strong sense of want is the 
necessary condition of a great manifestation of God 
to the soul. Though He is always around us, His 
actual omnipresence is moral. He waits to he gra- 
cious. Even God's presence and grace depend, there- 
fore, on ourselves. This should be impressed on the 
children. He proposed that " blessed are the merci- 
ful" should be illustrated by the parables of the 
good Samaritan and the unkind fellow-servant ; and 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



233 



then children should be called on to tell some story 
or anecdote in which compassionateness is evident. 
Some one said that " reward seemed to address a sel- 
fish principle." Dr. Charming thought it need not be 
put in that light ; but children might be made to see 
that the sympathetic obtained sympathy by .a natural 
law. 

He went on to " pure in heart/' that is, clean. " They 
shall see God " is to be explained as their realizing 
God's presence in conscience, which is His voice, in 
proportion as they kept away evil thoughts, " at once 
the reward of the degree of purity obtained, and the 
efficient means of obtaining more." On the peace- 
makers' beatitude Dr. Channing said there would be 
" a fine opportunity of attacking boys on their quar- 
relsome habits." This was connected by Mr. Ticknor 
with the passage in the sermon about " resist not 
evil." Dr. Channing in reply to some question or 
remark of his said that " we are too apt to read these 
strict precepts as if we wanted to see how little they 
could be made to mean instead of how much ; and 
hence we content ourselves with a merely tolerant 
feeling towards our fellow-creatures, or, at most, with 
what we call benevolence. But tolerance and benevo- 
lence do not express the spirit of Christ's reign, the 
spirit of the kingdom of heaven, that pure love which 
prompts to lay down life for one's friends. In this 
we are most of us deplorably deficient." He recom- 
mended that the children should be asked whether 
they were as apt to return a blow on one whom they 
loved very much indeed; and then to draw the in- 
ference that, where love is deep, sweetness and for- 



234 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



bearance come of course, and spontaneously. "If then 
Christ inculcates sweetness and forbearance as a 
general rule of conduct, he implies that this deepest 
kind of love can be generally felt. And if it is not 
felt, it is because we do not see that in human beings 
which may excite it. This not seeing is our fault ; we 
should try to see it," Some one said, " One cannot see 
virtues that do not exist." Dr. Channing replied, 
" iSTot merely virtue, but the capacity of virtue in- 
spires deep love. The innocence of a child is only 
a capacity of virtue, yet what love it excites ! To 
make children love their fellow-creatures to such a 
degree as to give rise to sweetness and forbearance, 
and other social virtues, it is necessary to open their 
eyes to what degree of virtue every one may rise ; 
show them that every human being is to be received 
as an embryo angel, even as an infant Christ. f He 
that receiveth a little child in ray name receiveth me/ 
said J esus. Let them see that Jesus loved even the 
worst sinners, because he saw even in them the ca- 
pacity to wear his own highest glory." 

There was a great deal of talk on this topic, and he 
told a remarkable story about a Xorth-End boy Some 
years before, he had heard that there was a boy in the 
very lowest ranks of life in Ann Street, who was a 
natural peacemaker; that he did not resist evil; that 
when reviled he reviled not again ; and, in short, was 
an exemplification of the highest virtues of Chris- 
tianity. The boy 'professed to act on this principle ; 
and was so amiable and spontaneously kind that he 
overcame opposition and ridicule, and no one ever 
fought with him, from the same principle of honor 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



235 



that no one fights a Quaker ; he was a great favorite, 
and believed to be a general friend, and his efforts to 
interfere with the quarrels of other boys, and make 
peace between them, were allowed, and often success- 
ful. I asked what was this boy's name. He could 
not remember, but said he had seen him; for he 
sought him out to talk with him. I asked if the 
conversation was satisfactory. He said it was ; that he 
should infer from it just what he had heard of the boy. 
He died of some disease, when he was between ten 
and eleven years of age. On being " persecuted for 
righteousness sake," Dr. Channing spoke of the man- 
ner in which moral courage and independence might 
be set forth. He said the boy of whom he had just 
spoken was for a time persecuted, but he persevered, 
and conquered opposition. 

I cannot quite make out from my journal whether 
this conversation about the North-End boy was in the 
meeting, or privately with me immediately afterwards. 

At the next meeting the subject was to be the Devil ; 
and Mrs. Bigelow and the Cabots went, determined to 
resist his existence in a personal and intelligent form ; 
they said, "Dr. Channing evidently leans towards 
him ! " He began with speaking of John the Bap- 
tist ; for his life was the subject of the lesson to the 
children. He drew a vivid picture of this herald of 
Christ, whose rough but sublime mode of life, tem- 
poral and spiritual, should be brought home to them; 
and also the need of his peculiar ministry at the 
time, in order to shock the minds of the people out of 
their gross ideas of the Messiah, and out of the cere- 
monies in which they lost the spirit of religion ; out 



236 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



of their pride in the blood of Abraham, — not so es- 
sential a tie as would be the partaking of Abrahams 
faith. The children were to be asked what was meant 
by making children of Abraham out* of stones, etc. 
He thought they would take these words materially ! 
I told him children understood this figurative and 
hyperbolical method of expression better than what 
was more literal. But, as usual, he maintained that 
children put the material meaning to material images. 
I think he must have lived in his childhood among 
prosaic people. He was imaginative himself, how- 
ever. 

At this meeting, before coming to the subject for 
the evening, he referred to verses 13 and 23 of the 
fourth chapter of Matthew, where Peter and Andrew 
are called, and are said to follow ; also to Mark's ac- 
count in the first chapter, verses 16. etc. He pro- 
posed that the children should be asked, What made 
them follow ? whether it was a miracle, or whether 
they had any obvious reason to believe in him ? 
And having excited attention by these questions, he 
proposed the teachers should turn to the fifth chapter 
of Luke, and show them the account of the miracu- 
lous draught of fishes, which happened before they 
were called. " This explains why they so readily fol- 
lowed ; and it will teach the children to read the gos- 
pel history with open eyes, — comparing the several 
accounts, and putting things together in a natural 
sequence. We cannot too early get them out of that 
habit of passive reception which makes the Scriptures 
a dead letter to multitudes." 

At last we came to the Temptation, and the ques- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 237 

tion of the Devil. Dr. Channing said he had intended 
to prepare himself for this question by consulting au- 
thorities, but had had no time. " The first question 
is, 'Did the Jews at the time believe in visible ap- 
pearances of an Evil Spirit ? ' " He read a note from 
Mr. Norton, which said that the Jews never, at any 
time, believed that Satan appeared in a visible shape ; 
they used the expression " Satan spoke," and the like, 
to indicate that an evil spirit worked on the mind at 
the time being. He was asked, if it was not clear 
that the Jews believed in an individual intelligent 
Evil Spirit par eminence, from the time of their rela- 
tions with Persia ? He said, yes ; and that in Christ's 
time he was supposed to be the author of all sin. I 
asked him if the Satan in Job was not the oldest 
mention of him as an individual intelligence ? He 
said it was; and the date of Job was, at latest, in 
David's time, who is supposed by some to have found 
the book in his conquest of Edom. This is the date 
of its being brought into the Bible canon ; but it 
might have been, and probably was, more ancient than 
Moses. There was not a Jewish allusion in it. The 
Satan of Job was one of the Sons of God. It was 
evidently a personification of Natural Evil, as within 
the providential government of God. Satan was never 
used as a proper name until after the return from 
Captivity. Mr. Ticknor asked who tempted Eve. 
"The Serpent" said Dr. Channing, "not Satan." I 
asked if Satan was a Hebrew word or Chaldaic ? He 
said Satan — a common noun, meaning adversary or 
enemy — was old Hebrew, used continually in the 
Books of Kings, in the accounts of the wars, etc. 



238 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



" But as a proper name, are you not aware that it 
does not occur until after the Captivity ? " he asked. 
" Compare the old Hebrew account of the temptation 
of David to number the people, — where it is said, in 
Kings, God tempted David, — with the Hebrew-Chal- 
daic account in the Chronicles, where it is said Satan 
tempted David, on this very same occasion ; and did 
we not learn that the use of it as a proper name was 
derived from the Assyrians or Persians, who believed 
in two Principles ? Here was more than a verbal 
difference ; it indicated a great change of view." I 
asked if either view was necessary ? if there was not 
another, which ascribed sin to that imperfection of our 
nature by which came our freedom, and exonerated 
not only God,, but an intelligent Evil Spirit, from 
producing it in us ? He said, " The Christian view 
of the origin of Evil certainly goes deeper than either 
J ewish view, and makes it originate in the soul's own 
unfaithfulness to its nature. It is Christianity alone 
which reveals the Freedom of Man." Some one said, 
"We agree, then, that there is no intelligent Evil 
Spirit in the universe, but that the Jews believed 
there was one, from the time of the Captivity till the 
time of Christ, though he might not appear in a visi- 
ble form ? " Dr. Channing replied : " Yes, that seems 
to be the conclusion; but the language of the first 
Christians, as recorded in the New Testament, shows 
that they leaned towards the Jewish notion of an 
individual Satan. His agency was recognized in the 
very worst actions done by men; but then it was 
observable that it was not spoken of as a mitiga- 
tion of the sinner's personal guilt." He said: "If 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 239 

Satan was really an intelligent independent agent, 
it was a most unreasonable question of the Apostle 
to Ananias, ' Why has Satan put it into thy heart to 
lie against the Holy Ghost ? ' This question should 
have been addressed to Satan : 'Why didst thou make 
this man an instrument of thy purposes V " Some one 
asked : " How did J esus use the word Satan ? " Dr. 
Channing cited several passages where it was obvious 
the word Satan stood for the abstract principle of 
Evil ; but he said it was not easy to explain the pas- 
sage, " Ye are of your father the Devil," etc., for it cer- 
tainly recognized the popular belief, as well as some 
other passages that were cited. Some one asked 
whether such a recognition amounted to a confir- 
mation of the general opinion of the Jews ; since in 
no instance he had cited was it the object of the 
communication to teach anything about the nature 
of the Evil Spirit, bat to inculcate some moral lesson ; 
and Satan's history, as it stood in the mind of the 
Jew, was pressed into service in order to express 
an idea. Moral truth was unintelligible to the 
Jews ; they relied for salvation on their community 
with the blood of Abraham. Jesus knew that they 
intended to murder him : he sets forth the heinous- 
ness of murder and deceit, by referring them to what 
they considered the Author of Evil and Enemy of 
God, as inspiring them. I asked if, in any other in- 
stance, Jesus brought in prevalent errors of the Jews 
" to point his moral and adorn his tale " ? Dr. Chan- 
ning said : 11 In his parables he often seems to do this ; 
and certainly, if the interpretation of ' possessions as 
natural diseases was correct, each of these stories 



240 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

would be an instance. Jesus did not correct the no- 
tion that Beelzebub gave power to work miracles, but 
made use of their own statements to convince them of 
their disingenuous way of interpreting his miracles." 

He then said: " What matter of external fact lay at 
the bottom of the account of Christ's temptation ? Was 
there anything but a spiritual experience ? " He seemed 
to think that it was probably an exercise which took 
place in our Saviour's life, at the time and in the place 
mentioned, but that this was all that was external 
about it. One lady said she had seen it suggested 
that perhaps some Jew followed him into the wilder- 
ness, after his baptism, and. endeavored to win him to 
give his great power to the Jewish cause against the 
Romans, for considerations of personal gain, glory, 
and political dominion. Dr. Channing did not think 
it likely. Here an extract from Schliermacher was 
read, w 7 ho supposes that this passage comprehends 
the spiritual experience, or rather that it was a state- 
ment of the spiritual situation of Jesus Christ, related 
by himself to his disciples, in his usual parabolic 
manner, as a lesson to them upon the principles on 
which they were to exercise the miraculous endow- 
ments conferred on them. Dr. Channing said : " At 
all events, it is evident that this narrative must have 
dropped from the lips of Jesus himself. For if it was 
an external fact, no one was present, and he must 
have told it, or it would not have been known. And, 
still more, if it was a spiritual fact only, he must 
have stated it. 

" But before we proceed to comment further on 
the lessons taught in the parables, I would recur to 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 241 

the previous question we have been discussing. In 
Ephesians, last chapter, verses 11 and 12, it is said : 
1 We wrestle not against flesh and blood ; but against 
principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of 
this world ; against spiritual wickedness in high 
places.' Does not this refer to a kingdom of per- 
sonal devils, — ' principalities, powers, rulers ' ? " He 
looked at me, and I asked him if " flesh and blood " 
might not refer to bodily tortures ; and all the 
rest of the enemies mean the moral atmosphere 
inimical to their spiritual life, generated by the fact 
that the princes and rulers of this world were 
against the Christians ? Was not Paul saying, <c I 
doubt not you will be able to bear stripes and im- 
prisonment, fire and sword ; but your danger is more 
spiritual : it is your own associations and alliances 
with princes and powers " ? Dr. Channing replied : 
" That is an important interpretation of the passage, 
and I think it a reasonable one. But why should 
Jesus allow so important an error to prevail, — an 
error that we consider so dangerous to the convictions 
of responsibility we all have, and try to get rid of ? " 
I asked, What was the danger of error, if it was 
not forgetting the power of circumstances to check 
our spiritual life ; and if this did not account for our 
being permitted* to conceive our spiritual danger in a 
personal form ? Did we not resist it more effectually 
by conceiving it more vividly? When the philosophy 
of the human mind was so little understood, and its 
power of transmuting Nature into a living thing was 
not known, only by believing in an intelligent Evil 
Spirit could men be brought to bring out sufficient 

16 



242 REMINISCENCES OF DR. C BANNING. 



power to guard themselves ; but a better philosophy 
makes a new statement of Evil necessary. Dr. 
Channing said it was riot easy to explain why Christ 
and his apostles had not guarded more against this 
statement of the personal Devil. It had been well 
said that the Devil made a larger figure in the creed 
of some sects than God, and took stronger possession 
of the mind. Some writer had said " he was really 
the God of the Dark Ages, and religion then was but 
a series of exercises to keep him at bay." He added 
with a smile, that Satan was the cause of an ill tem- 
per, which would be infinite if he had personal exist- 
ence, for we were not allowed to pity or love him ; 
and yet, if he was a personal existence, we must be- 
lieve he was a suffering existence. I said, " Burns 
ventured to pity him." He replied, " Burns's expres- 
sion of compassion is a great argument against God's 
having created such a self-conscious existence.'' 

After this, we proceeded to speak of the spiritual 
truths actually revealed in " the temptation of Christ." 
I have, however, no record of the rest of the conver- 
sation. But I have a copy of a letter to Eliza Sullivan 
that I wrote during the summer, in which I presented 
the same views that on the whole we decided upon 
at this meeting. From this I will now quote : — 

" The first moral circumstance in our Saviour's life 
was this (in which he was placed by his miraculous 
power). He could obtain personal comforts by the 
exercise of his exceptional gifts ; but had he allowed 
himself to use them for this end, he would no longer 
have been a ' man of sorrows,' and therefore would 
not have had his peculiar power of softening the hu- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



243 



man heart and drawing it to himself. He revealed 
himself the Saviour, by going behind this temptation 
with the word of the Lord : ' Man liveth not by bread 
alone/ etc. Genius, in every degree, is in the same 
temptation as Jesus in this respect. It may lose it- 
self by seeking sordid personal ends. 

"The second great moral circumstance of Jesus' 
life was his power of arresting attention and produ- 
cing an effect by prodigious displays of himself; 
but to do this is contrary to the method of life 
eternal. It would have depressed the moral powers 
of those around him, destroying self-respect. He 
never used his power over Nature except to illus- 
trate moral precepts. Genius always has this temp- 
tation, and it can only be met by the word of the 
Lord: 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God/ 
irreverently testing Providence. 

" The third moral circumstance of Jesus' life was his 
power of getting social and political dominion by foster- 
ing the Satanic powers of man, — ambition, love of war, 
etc. To this also he opposes the word of the Lord : ' Thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt 
thou serve/ The meaning of Jesus being tempted ' like 
as we are ' is, then, that inasmuch as he was a crea- 
ture, though the first-born of creation, there were two 
ways of viewing everything in his power as in ours. 
It was perfectly true that he could make stones into 
bread, that the angels of God have ever in charge the 
beloved of God, that the kingdoms of the world are 
promised to the faithful Son. But his principles were 
that there is a higher bread than meat, that Provi- 
dence must not be tempted (or tested) by our tarn- 



244 REMINISCENCES OE DR. CHANNING. 



pering with our moral conditions, and that holiness is 
the way of life. In these he triumphed, and became 
a Saviour to all those that believe. Thus did Jesus 
in a parable tell his experience to his disciples, for 
the benefit of the Church forever. But the Church has 
not followed him." As we know it historically it has 
practised simony, has tempted the Lord by audacious 
displays of prodigious power, has taken possession by 
foul means still more than by fair of the kingdoms 
of this world, and thus has proved no locly to that 
spirit which began our redemption eighteen hundred 
years ago." 

At another Sunday-school meeting, of which I have 
not the date, Mr. Gannett and Miss S. Cabot asked 
whether it was possible or easy to ascertain whether 
or not we are in a state of progress. Mr. Gannett 
took the negative. When Dr. Channing came in, he 
took the positive without knowing what had been 
said before. By comparison, he said, we could esti- 
mate whether we had improved; whether sacrifice 
were as hard now as once, or temptation as powerful. 
Mr. Gannett said, " You make self-examination, Sir, 
very easy and pleasant." Dr. Channing said, " The 
chief advantage of self-examination is to brino- the 
mind to a consciousness of the highest within it, and 
this always gives power over the things of time, and 
is exhilarating. The proof that our hour of self- 
examination is profitable is that we come from it 
stronger, more hopeful. To analyze the past is bad 
generally. Self-deception is not so common as false 
views of duty. We do not apply the same moral 
judgment to our religious relations as to our social. 



EEMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



245 



Calvinism has done infinite injury by giving us false 
views of the Divine government, and by its ex- 
aggerated statements of future punishment ; it has 
depressed the general moral spirit, and we cannot be 
trusted to accuse, to bear witness, to judge, to decide 
about our own spiritual life. Few understand that 
it is a dictate of honor and manly fidelity to be grate- 
ful to God. A slavish spirit of fear, instead of a 
noble spirit of veneration and love, pervades closet 
exercises. The tone is, ' God has made us vile, let 
Him please to ennoble us ! ' All is passive, both the 
sin and the deliverance from sin." 

I am tempted to give more of these Sunday-school 
talks, but the foregoing are a fair specimen of them. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 



THE Sunday-school teachers' meetings came to a 
sudden close at Dr. Channing's on a certain 
evening in the spring of 1827, when the conversation 
was so interesting that his strength suddenly gave 
way and his voice failed; which was the beginning of 
a long fit of illness. His brother the physician then 
decreed that he must have no more public evening 
engagements. So the teachers ever after met in Mr. 
Gannett's study. 

There is in the fourth volume of Dr. Channing's 
complete Works a discourse on Sunday-school teach- 
ing, which he delivered on occasion of the Association 
of the Schools of the Unitarian Societies of Boston for 
mutual counsel and improvement. At the first meet- 
ing of this Association in May, 1827, Mr. Jonathan 
Phillips went with Dr. Channing to the deliberating 
assembly, and listened to reports of the great variety 
of methods used by the different teachers. Mr. Phillips 
very characteristically had had grave doubts of the 
expediency of Sunday-schools. But w T hen he heard 
the reports of the two superintendents, — one of the 
male and one of the female departments of the West 
Church school, — who maintained and acted on dia- 
metrically opposite views as to the point of confining 
their classes to the study of the Scriptures, or using 
stories and the ministry of material Nature to awaken 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 247 



and cultivate the religious sentiment, he seemed to be 
converted at once. Breaking his usual silence in 
public, he unexpectedly rose and burst out with an 
enthusiastic expression of his faith, that, if Sunday- 
schools were organized in such a liberal spirit as to give 
the individual teachers freedom to pursue their own 
course, a really vital help might be given to the young 
by those who had so broken the spell of human au- 
thority as to enter into living communion with the 
universal Father, who had created each for co-operation 
with Himself for the spiritual good of all. In one of 
my letters to Mrs. Sullivan I find the following ac- 
count of this speech: — 

He said he long had thought that we did not do 
justice to human nature in our mode of teaching ; we 
were so much in the habit of talking of our. ignor- 
rance, our weakness, and our sinfulness, that we dis- 
couraged if not degraded ourselves. He believed it 
would be useful to look on our nature in a different 
light; on the idea of infinite excellence, without 
whose realization in some degree in our own life we 
could never be content ; on this power of choice, which 
made us the artificers of our own moral happiness ; 
on our power of knowledge, by which we aspire to 
embrace in our minds the whole outward universe ; 
on that power of charity which brings our souls into 
a living sympathy with the whole family of man. It 
was our happiness and our education to understand 
God's unutterable goodness to us. " And how are we 
made conscious of this ? By conflict with difficulty, 
— a conflict and a difficulty that the soul loves, feel- 
ing by instinct that it is the means of all its strength, 



248 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

its food. Yes, the noble soul loves difficulty, — intel- 
lectual difficulties, moral difficulties ; for by overcom- 
ing them it penetrates into itself and sees in its depths 
the goodness of God, who has given us our free-will, 
our thirst for knowedge, our power of universal sym- 
pathy. These are God's great gifts. To develop them 
in ourselves is our high destiny ; to assist others and 
give them the impulse to the same development is edu- 
cation, — the most glorious of all action ; the action of 
one immortal mind upon another, — the greatest of all 
privileges ! But this privilege is granted on a condition. 
"We must understand our nature ; we must understand 
the education which Providence is carrying on to 
develop it, in order to have the privilege to co-oper- 
ate with or be instrumental in this divine because truly 
human work. It is the reward of the exertions we 
make- for knowledge to obtain this power over others ; 
nay, to be sure not to injure instead of to aid them. 
What we call our w 7 eaknessess are our qualification. 
Had we not been ignorant and weak, and were we not 
liable to sin, how could we help the ignorant, the 
weak, the morally frail? All created intelligence 
must come to its moral perfection through conflict, 
difficulty, struggle. The archangel is horn upon earth. 
It is by his sensibility to ail the evils of this 
world that he may be known; by his feeling of the 
necessity to struggle ; by his dissatisfaction with all 
views short of truth, with all virtue short of perfect 
integrity, which is holiness. He is modest, he respects 
other minds ; for God is unutterably good to all if he 
is good to one, and it is by keeping others conscious of 
this dignity of their nature that he can hope to enter 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 249 



into and embrace it, and feel his own strengthened. 
He educates others, for he throws open his heart ; 
he lets others rear their moral fabrics by his own. 
God has not committed education to those who can- 
not by their own education be fitted for it. Every- 
thing in our experience, every want, every relation of 
life, educates us if we are open to it. Look at that 
hovel ! see the chinks through which the winter wind 
whistles, freezing as it goes ; see that haggard woman : 
it is a mother ; see her pale cheek ; and on that 
wretched bed is a child in the agonies of a raging 
fever ; hear its moan ! it asks that wretched mother 
for a cup of cold water — 'but first, mother, give me 
one kiss ! ' the caress is given ; the child has gone to 
the throne of the Heavenly Father ; but it has gone 
educated ! that mother, even in her wretchedness and 
her poverty had opened the fountain of love in its 
heart ; that fountain will flow forever : it is the water 
of life ; it is heaven, for it is the element of worship. 
This is education. Father, you take your boy with 
you to your place of business ; you are engrossed, and 
he is forgotten : but by the instinct of nature the 
lighthearted boy watches you ; he is curious to see 
your actions ; he speculates upon your conduct ; he 
sees you sacrifice sordid interest to duty, — the outward 
good to the inivard sentiment ; he returns with you to 
the evening repast : he went out with you feeling 
the affection an animal feels for his benefactor, — he 
returns with a moral sentiment of reverential love." 

In consequence of this speech Mr. Phillips was 
made President of the Boston Sunday-school Society, 
and the next year made another speech of a like thrill- 



250 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



ing character. My reason for mentioning them here 
is to illustrate a trait of Dr. Channinofs nature. He 
of course sympathized wholly with these thoughts, 
which were poured forth with a fervor of feeling that 
surprised those who did not know Mr. Phillips per- 
sonally. Dr. Channing, however, at both times, de- 
clared himself to have suffered a kind of agony, lest 
the sacred depths of his friend's sensibility should be 
profaned by vulgar misunderstanding. "I wanted 
to throw a mantle over him," said he. "I sympathize 
with his peculiar personality too much and I love him 
too deeply to be able to hear him speak in public." 

In the fall of 1827 conversations of an informal 
character, on the general education of children, grew 
up between Dr. Channing, his wife, Mr. Phillips, Dr. j 
Follen, my sister, and myself, who met once a week, 
either at Dr. Channing's or Mr. Phillips's house, for 
the purpose. Mr. William Eussell (a Scotchman 
who had come to Boston at first as a teacher of elo- 
cution, but was found to be devoted to the criticism 
of all education, and who became the editor of the 
first Journal of Education which was published in 
America, and was for a while a partner with my sister 
and myself in our school) and Mr. G. F. Thayer some- 
times met with us, — we four teachers having both 
Dr. Channing's and Mr. Phillips's children more or 
less under our instruction. 

The conversations now ranged over every depart- 
ment of education, inquiring into the comparative 
value of the study of languages, ancient and modern, 
and of the natural and the abstract sciences, of his- 
tory, fiction, and poetry, considered as means of edu- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



251 



cation. Three minds, so harmonious but so utterly 
diverse in their turn and discipline, and so entirely 
self-determined and independent, as Dr. Channing's, 
Dr. Follen's, and Mr. Phillips's, made these discussions 
very rich. But my own life was then so crowded 
with work that my journal was neglected; and I 
felt as if it w T ere not necessary to record what it 
seemed so impossible to forget ! Now I regret that 
I did not put down the very words and illustrations 
of those important ideas, that I might communicate 
them more satisfactorily than by paraphrase. They 
were a very uncommon exchange of one another's life. 
We were in such mutual confidence, and so sure of 
one another's generous interpretation, that we could 
speak of ourselves as third persons when investigating 
the methods of education. Each of us felt that we 
had one case of development that we thoroughly knew, 
and that was our own. We felt, as nearly every one 
feels, that we were not what God designed us to be, and 
could see where our education had been defective, or on 
a mistaken method ; and we offered ourselves freely 
as diagrams for demonstration of principles. 

The knowledge I had of the personal history of 
each .member of this little party gave so much signifi- 
cance to what they said, that perhaps I had better 
give some hint of this to the reader of these notes. 
Mr. Phillips's personal experience had been exception- 
ally tragical. His Calvinistic father had acted out 
the theory of total depravity with logical consistency. 
He gave his children not a particle of liberty, taking 
for granted that it would necessarily be abused. " I 
went to the Boston Latin School from my earliest 



252 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



years," I heard him say at one of our meetings, 
" where no principle was ever suggested but that the 
will of the master should be brought about ; and 
corporeal punishment was the only means ' old Hunt ' 
ever conceived of for that end. I never left Boston all 
the year round, for that was the habit of my maternal 
relatives, and I inherited, with longevity, an excep- 
tionally morbid physical constitution. My childhood 
was a series of illnesses. When I was fifteen, the 
family physician pronounced me hopelessly diseased, 
and recommended the country as the only medicine 
from which anything was to be hoped. Sitting under 
a tree in Andover when I was fifteen years old, 
Nature in her summer beauty first spoke to my 
senses ; and an idea flashed up within my heart that 
/ was a free agent who might have something to say 
in regard to my own destiny, both in this world and 
the other, — for which last it had been branded into 
my brain I w T as mainly created. I have heard of a 
child born in a Swedish mine, who, till he was twelve 
years old, never saw the sun. Then he was brought 
up to the upper world, and saw the sun rise! Such 
was this idea to me. Is not Nature a minister of God 
no less than the adult generation, — that had proved 
to me only an oppressor, with the single exception of 
my mother, whose occasional indulgences had been 
the only amelioration of my miserable childhood; and 
she had granted them as if she thought she was doing 
wrong ! But after a summer of some enjoyment and 
a little better health, I completed my preparation for 
college at the academy at Andover, and entered Har- 
vard College just when the French philosophy of the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 253 

Bevolutionary period broke the chains of old super- 
stition and brought into doubt all order. My father 
was now more strenuous than ever in the discipline 
of repression. I knew he was wealthy, but I had 
never the command of a penny, The curriculum of 
the college was an intolerable burden to me, and I 
utterly neglected it in favor of speculative thought. 
Admonitions and threats of dismission for my delin- 
quencies in study naturally enough impressed my 
father with the idea of my lack of common ability, 
and I was forced to leave college and enter his hard- 
ware store, whose heavy work broke down my small 
physical strength. Then a friend of my father pro- 
posed that I should enter his counting-room, and the 
offer was accepted, and proved the mutual misery of 
our friend and myself ; for Mr. E. was only less 
diseased in nerves than myself, though the manifes- 
tation was different, for he was irritable and tyran- 
nical, and I weak and despairing. But old Dr. 
Danforth, who was reputed a rampant infidel like 
most great physicians of that day, again came to my 
rescue, and this time effectually ; for he told my 
father if he wished to save my life to send me to 
Europe, free to do whatever I pleased, and draw upon 
him for the means. When I saw the shores of New 
England fade on my sight, I again felt what a few 
years before I had felt in Andover, — that I was the 
only legitimate master of my own destiny, and that 
the first thing to aim at should be health of body. 
I would plunge into the pleasures of Paris ; and 
happily the innocent attractions of the opera and 
drama prevailed over all others. These had been 



254 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



wholly forbidden to my youth. I had never entered 
a theatre, and there had never been an opera in Boston 
at that era. To live, to breathe in sunny France, and 
later in the sublime scenery of Switzerland and Italy, 
soothed and exhilarated my spirits. One day I 
strayed into the great library of the University of 
Paris, and opened a hook for the first time in a year. 
It was Bacon's ' Novum Organon,' and it was this 
that put into my hands the clew to self-education, 
which is the only education, for I think men can do 
nothing for each other that is vital. What is called 
education is happily not often so utterly opposed to 
all true life as mine was ; but all education is at best 
only good for the individual self-activity it provokes." 

Mr. Phillips did not say all this at one time, — I can 
only make an abstract of these conversations ; but in 
the course of them he said it all, and much more. 
Dr. Charming, in our tete-a-tete conversations, contin- 
ued the story. He was in college with Mr. Phillips, 
and his own mind busy with the same questions of 
society and individual self-cultivation; but he was 
happier in having a perfect assurance of a benignant 
Author of Nature, though he too had had Calvimstic 
surroundings. But they were not like Mr. Phillips's, 
, so extreme; for he saw life first in PJiode Island, 
where the religious atmosphere has always retained 
something of the independence of Ptoger Williams's 
spirit, and his own maternal relatives were members 
of the Episcopal Church, whose creed was practically 
liberal in comparison with the Calvinism of New 
England. Though Mr. Phillips had been sceptical to 
the point of absolute atheism, his profound sensibility 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 255 



to the goodness of women, whom he judged of by his 
mother and the cousin whom he afterwards married, 
saved him from the scoffing spirit. To his imagina- 
tion the universe was not a temple, as it w r as to Dr. 
Channing, but a dungeon ; and his friend could not 
answer his terrible pessimism. " His was an imagina- 
tion which hung the whole universe in crape," as Dr. 
Channing said, and "under the immediate spell of 
whose sad eloquence it w T as all I could do myself to 
preserve the equilibrium of my own mind, and wait 
till I should find the solution of all dark problems, 
which I never doubted was to be found in God, and 
which I did find at last through Jesus Christ. To 
"Mr. Phillips, Bacon was the schoolmaster that in the 
end led him to Christ. After a few years in Europe, 
during which he recovered a measure of health, he 
began to feel his mental and moral independence. 
Then he came back to America, drawn, as he acknowl- 
edged, by his love to the cousin whom he afterwards 
married. 

I myself had the privilege of knowing this lady, 
who died in a year or two after I came to Boston, 
and it was very interesting to see her benignant in- 
fluence on Mr. Phillips, who, to the end of his life, 
alternated periods of the most elevated thinking with 
seasons of depression under his hereditary tempera- 
ment; and sometimes, in conversation, an unlucky 
chord of association would be struck, and he would 
fall into a low, sepulchral tone, and the old gloom of 
a " universe in crape" come over him. Then Mrs. 
Phillips had the art of asking some happy question 
which would break the evil spell, and his mind would 



256 REMINISCENCES OF DB. CHANNING. 



spring back into its upper track, and he would career 
away in the heaven of first principles, on the wings 
of hopeful Imagination. 

Dr. Channing was in the beginning of his ministry, 
at Federal Street, when Mr. Phillips came back from 
Europe ; and his friend's and his wife's religion inter- 
ested him, and brought him to read again, with new 
eyes, the Xew Testament. He studied the life of 
Jesus Christ on the Baconian principle of asking 
everything to explain itself. Dr. Channing said : " It 
was the union in Jesus Christ of insight into first 
principles with freedom from the lust of spiritual 
dominion, and his reverence for men's freedom to 
' judge what is right of their own selves,' — especially 
his always acting from the proximate motive, as Mr. 
Phillips used frequently to say, — that commanded 
his faith ; which was at last as fervent as it was 
enlightened." 

To the end of his life, Mr. Phillips retained his 
jealousy of ecclesiasticism ; but nevertheless, as early 
as 1804, he became a member of Dr. Channing's 
church, and was ever afterwards one of the deacons, 
and a most efficient assistant and aid in the pas- 
toral work among the poor, as I have intimated in 
Chapter IV. The relation between the two friends 
was of a noble equality. Mr. Phillips, with Dr. Chan- 
ning's hearty good-will, seemed to be a watch set 
over him, lest he should fall into the narrowness of 
ecclesiasticism. "You know you are a clergyman/' 
Mr. Phillips would often say, when they were dis- 
cussing first principles, and Dr. Channing had given 
his views of practical application. I remember Dr. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



257 



Channing once replying a little quickly, " Yes, I know 
it ; and always remember the disadvantage." 

In all the conversations on education, I remember 
Dr. Follen was very earnest in the thought that we 
should not deal with the child with main reference 
to his future, but to his present perfection. " It was 
the perfect child, in the balance of childish beauty, 
that was the best ' father of the man,' and not the 
child prematurely developed into the man. Educa- 
tion that did the latter both destroyed the child and 
dwarfed the man." We all agreed to this, and there- 
fore it was one of the questions oftenest debated, how 
to employ, on the childish plane, all the faculties, — 
mechanical, imaginative, and scientific, — without 
taking children out of the child-life of love and joy. 
Thus the principle of Froebel was suggested, though 
not worked out into methodical processes. It is a 
noticeable fact, that the idea did not suggest to our 
understanding the practical method : and does not 
this prove that action requires some other motive 
than the idea ? Art, which is man's creativeness, 
results from Love and Thought, — 

" From the pair is nothing hidden, 
To the twain is nought forbidden." 

Dr. Follen had had a surfeit of classical study in 
his German education, and was earnest for the study 
of natural science at the beginning; postponing 
mathematics, and especially the study of the dead 
languages : and all I hear now about what is called 

o o 

the New Education only recalls to me his arguments. 
Dr. Channing, on the other hand, brought out all 

17 



258 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



the arguments for the study of dead languages, on 
the ground that language is the first creation of the 
human mind, and, if taught on the reasonable -meth- 
od of comparing the new idiom studied with the ver- 
nacular (as was necessarily done in construing, with 
which he thought language-teaching should begin), 
puts the mind into possession of itself. I wish I 
could recall, word for word, his description of the pro- 
cess of mind in the act of translation, as the shapes 
of meaning grow upon the understanding, quickening 
conception and imagination and the integrations of 
reason. Dr. Follen also described the process of mind 
in its investigations and classifications of natural ob- 
jects, which he thought involved a still more le- 
gitimate play of the imagination, leading to direct 
knowledge of the Infinite Mind, that states itself 
purely as laios of Nature, while lingual phenomena 
are so largely exponent of the disorderly play of the 
human faculties. 

But Dr. Channing asked, "Is it not desirable 
to know the false play of the mind as well as the 
true, in order to discover truth and separate it from 
error, which is what we must learn to do ? Does it 
not in the end guard against and deliver the mind 
from the delusions of language, to be obliged to 
render thoughts from one idiom to another? The 
abstractions of different languages do not translate 
each other, unless by the help of circumlocutions ; 
and iri the appreciation of the abstractions, national 
characteristics must be appreciated and allowed for. 
In youth, moreover, the mind is most flexible, and 
the imagination strong of wing ; and it is more easy 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



259 



to learn to think in another idiom. The study of 
Latin and Greek, though so much more lifelessly 
taught than in the days of Eoger Ascham, cannot 
but give some conception of the possible variety of 
human thought, and tends to liberate from provincial 
narrowness and prejudice, and awaken breadth of 
mind. There is a great truth expressed in calling 
the study of these languages " the study of the hu- 
manities" 

While Dr. Follen did not disallow these considera- 
tions, and advocated the study of the so-called classics 
in the later stages of education, he still maintained 
that a study of the mother-tongue, together with the 
colloquial use of modern languages, — especially of the 
German, which is so homogeneous and vegetative in 
its formations, — could be so alternated with the study 
of Nature as to secure the liberalizing ends ; and he 
said that the«universal attraction of the young mind 
to the analysis of natural objects, and the health of 
body incidental to studying Nature, not in scientific 
treatises but in living Nature, suggests that the early 
part of a child' s education should be of this cast 
rather than the other. 

In his practice with his own children, Dr. Channing 
combined the two methods. Every evening, before I 
began to read to him, he read an hour to his children, 
who were of opposite temperaments of mind and 
body. His daughter was more of his own turn of 
mind, loved history and stories, and inclined to read 
by herself ; his son was more like his mother's fam- 
ily, inheriting the taste for physical and natural 
science. He did not incline to read, and Dr. Chan- 



260 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 

ning could engage his attention only by reading about 
the visible universe, voyages of discovery, etc. The 
large naturalistic library of his mother and of his 
Aunt Sarah Gibbs was made interesting to his senses 
by the splendid pictorial illustrations of Audubon 
and other books, which he was never weary of poring 
over. The history of mechanical discovery and phy- 
sical experimenting were also his delight. When he 
was but nine years old, and characteristically had a 
toy steam-engine to play with, he invented an im- 
provement, which Dr. Channing wrote down with all 
the child's explanations ; and a few years' afterwards 
that very improvement was patented by a later in- 
ventor. Dr. Channing said William's knowledge of 
the vegetation and animal life of the world soon sur- 
passed his own. But William would not learn lan- 
guages except by compulsion, while his sister was 
especially apt in these, and without any trouble grew 
into the knowledge of Latin and French at quite an 
early age, under the instruction of myself and my 
sister. But our method of instruction was not the 
prevailing scholastic one. We taught to translate first 
by rote ; and when some pages of Latin or French 
were known by heart, and could be put back into 
English at sight, the sentences were explored to de- 
duce the syntactical and afterwards the etymological 
rules, which the pupils themselves were helped to 
formulate unless in exceptional cases, like that of Dr. 
Channing's son. It seemed to me that it was equally 
natural for children to be interested in the laws of 
the expression of thought as in the laws of outward 
things. My scholars never had any lessons given 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 261 



them to learn at home. My plan was to teach them 
how to study, by sitting down with them and helping 
them to true habits of analysis, which I found made 
them remember more easily than if they were called 
on merely to remember ; for the secret of memory is 
accurate and lively perception, with a pleased dwell- 
ing on what is perceived, memory being not an act of 
the will. Agonies of the will are more apt to destroy 
than produce it; and this is proved by the utter 
failure, which begins to be acknowledged everywhere, 
of the cramming system. All great acquisitions come 
from voluntary thought, and voluntary thought alone. 

Dr. Channing sometimes questioned whether I did 
not go to an extreme in thinking that all motive ex- 
cept that derived from interest in the subject of study 
produced superficial rather than profound acquisition, 
and that it was more sure to leave undeveloped both 
the intellectual conscience and the sense of the moral 
duty of study. I had a chance of demonstrating 
this to him on one occasion. The first lesson I gave 
my Latin class was to learn by heart the sentence, 
" Deus creavit coelum et terram intra sex dies," and 
then to find out all the English words derived from 
the Latin ones, — which we did in a conversation that 
ended with a repetition of the Latin sentence by each 
of the class. To this in subsequent lessons were 
added about ten pages of the " Historise Sacra " 
before we commenced the grammatical analysis, be- 
ginning first with universal grammar and then the 
particular Latin grammar. On this lesson in Latin 
we studied half an hour every day, so that by the 
time the children's brothers at the Boston Latin 



262 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



School had completed their first year of studying the 
Latin grammar, to which they gave nearly six hours 
in school and two hours of home study, my little 
class was able to translate accurately, with but 
little help from me, the Latin " Eobinson Crusoe," in 
whose story one of them was so much interested as 
to shed tears over Eobinson's first interview with 
Friday ! One day one of the class remarked, just 
after we had recurred to the grammar to elucidate 
some point, that she thought they " ought to learn 
the grammar all through as the boys at the Latin 
School did." I told them they might take the Latin 
grammar home if they thought so, and learn a lesson 
every day, and I would hear them say whatever they 
should learn individually. One day I received the 
following letter from Dr. Channing : — 

" My Dear Miss Peabody, — Mary's Latin-grammar 
lesson seems to me not only useless but worse than use- 
less to her. She has so little time for Latin that it should 
be given to what is necessary, — to the inflexions, rules, and 
study of some classic. The minutiae of the tenses may be 
sufficiently learned by construing and by occasional re- 
marks of the teacher. The school where I was taught 
made good scholars, and not a boy ever learned what you 
have given Mary to learn. I think it very important 
that grammar should not be an exercise for the memory 
any further than is plainly necessary. The examples to 
the rules should be parsed, not committed to memory. 
As to your other scholars your course may be successful. 
It does not suit Mary. She has not complained, however. 
I saw her studying the grammar, and asked her what was 
her lesson, and she showed it to me. I will thank you to 
give her different lessons. w. E. c." 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



263 



The lesson Mary had learned was two pages of fine 
print in Adams's old Latin grammar, explaining the 
shades of meaning denoted by the several forms of 
the past tenses. I replied to Dr. Channing's letter, 
that " the lesson was self-imposed and voluntary, and 
had been perfectly recited ; and I wished he would 
ask Mary why she had learned it." When I next 
saw him, he said, laughing, " You have triumphed. 
Mary told me the plan of the class to learn the whole 
grammar through, and she says she thinks it is very 
interesting to see the difference of the past tenses. 
And does it not prove what I said to Dr. Follen the 
other evening, that the mind finds itself naturally, 
even in early years, by a wise study of language ? " 

He wanted me to help "William in his lessons when 
I came in the evening, but I could not get the run of 
the child's mind in fitful interviews. The fatal spirit 
of antagonism to the teacher was already developed 
in him. It was quite striking to compare this boy's 
stupidity with respect to Latin with his wide-awake 
intelligence when any of his favorite subjects of 
study were the theme. Dr. Channing said to me one 
day, " I understand the play of Mary's mind, but 
cannot get the clew to William's." He changed his 
teachers, but in vain. The very bad health of the 
child constantly interfered with his going to school, 
for when he was nine years old he had the scarlet 
fever, and that was followed by a concatenation 
of diseases and a permanently dyspeptic stomach, 
making it very difficult to determine if it were right to 
coerce him. Some years later, Dr. Channing sent Wil- 
liam to Fellenberg, in Switzerland, hoping for the good 



264 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

effect of change of climate and all surroundings ; and 
he was there at the time of the great rebellion and 
took the democratic side, and on his return his mind 
was in a very active state for the first time on social 
and moral questions. Dr. Channing said, " He did 
not get, as I had hoped, any taste for classical study, 
but is otherwise so improved that I am satisfied' with 
the experiment." Many of William's notions were 
of a different cast from his father's, and it was 
striking to hear them converse, Dr. Channing was 
so " anxious not to impose his own mind on his 
children," as he said. Not long before his death he 
said to me, " I think William's mind suffers from his 
too exclusive study of physics ; he cannot gain from 
other minds. But he is earnest and honest, and will, 
I hope, work out his own pathway. God leads his 
children to Himself by different ways." 

Mr. Phillips, like Dr. Channing andDr.Follen,was an 
advocate for developing the faculties to personal inves- 
tigation, whether of Nature or language, before loading 
the memory with other men's words. Moral and intel- 
lectual freedom was that at which they all aimed, 
but Mr. Phillips more exclusively than the others. 
Individual freedom had been in his education per- 
petually antagonized. He was inclined to trust 
instinct to find its own appropriate food. He would 
open up all the avenues of knowledge to the child as 
soon as possible. He would not admit that instinct 
is blind. " It is the proper eye of each individual, 
which always sees when there is light. Education is 
to give light, not the eye to see it. We offer to 
children our dark prejudices, which are at best only 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



265 



farthing candles. All doors should be opened to let 
in the light at all points of the compass, and instinct 
will go out of many and find its way through Nature 
up to Nature's God. Our education is too much a 
process of hoodwinking." 

The details of school education were brought up 
occasionally by my questions. I once took an oppor- 
tunity to give the ideas of Warren Colburn, with 
whom I had been on terms of intimacy during my 
first experimenting in Boston in 1822. Like Bous- 
seau, Mr. Colburn thought education should take the 
child by the hand and make him the discoverer, as it 
were, for himself, not only in natural history, but in 
arithmetic, geometry, grammar, geography, and phys- 
ics, — a plan which I was attempting to carry out 
in my school in Colburn's own way, which has never, 
by the way, been followed in our schools even in 
arithmetic. For his manuals have not been used as 
he taught me to use them, — by putting the book 
into the hand of the pupil so as to preclude the 
exertion of the brain in memorizing the questions 
while making the calculations. He wished to relieve 
the brain at first of all abstract action, even that of 
memorizing, and leave it free to calculate with con- 
crete things before the eyes. 

Dr. Channing was greatly interested on hearing 
this, and helped me much in the application of the 
method to teaching the art of using the English lan- 
guage with intelligence, which is the aim of grammar ; 
and in my discovery of the fact that geometrical 
thought is easier for children than arithmetrical, 
while practical grammar, by gradual exercises in 



266 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



using words, is developing the power of thinking 
reasonably without taking children out of their child- 
hood. Letting the wordiness of abstraction take the 
place of moral sentiment was the danger Dr. Chan- 
ning was always wide awake to guard against, while 
Mr. Phillips was equally alive to the clanger of per- 
functory habits taking the place of a real moral 
activity. Dr. Follen thought patriotic and humane 
sentiments were to be cultivated carefully even in 
childhood ; and in a conversation upon the question 
whether there could be a choice between saving the 
life of your father or that of Fenelon, Dr. Follen de- 
fended the latter and Dr. Channing the former alter- 
native. Dr. Follen illustrated his view by showing 
how the despotisms that were crushing so many 
nations were cemented by gratitude to individual 
persons and the specious virtue of loyalty to a chief, 
which were cultivated to the absolute destruction of 
that cosmopolitan humanity which was the Christ- 
spirit. He almost seemed to think that gratitude 
was a vice. 

Of course such questions were not and could not be 
settled, but earnest discussion of them, illustrated by 
personal experiences and observations, shed a great 
deal of light ; and between Mr. Phillips's all-demol- 
ishing individualism and Dr. Follen's tendencies to 
socialism, Dr. Channing seemed to me always to 
strike the golden mean, and thus rise to the idea 
of a generous culture of the imagination by a study 
of history in such works as Plutarch's " Lives " and 
other biographies, which he thought the best reading 
for the vouno- because the immediate causes of his- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 267 

torical events are to be found in gifted, energetic 
persons, who show that men are responsible for the 
catastrophes of history. 

In a conversation upon the place of fiction in edu- 
cation, Dr. Channing expressed the fear that to lose 
oneself in imaginative sympathy with beautiful heroes 
and heroines, sympathizing as we always do with 
the noble, and gratified by the poetic justice which 
was dealt all the characters, satisfied us with our- 
selves, though our own life was of a lower tone. Mr. 
Phillips thought " it is more healthy to interest one's 
mind in the imaginary career of a variety of heroes 
and heroines, than to make oneself the hero of a 
romance, which is the alternative ; " and he added, 
" The sensitive who cannot ' disport themselves with 
imagination suffer too much from real life." Dr. 
Channing said the imaginary romances that he com- 
posed in his reveries always had for the hero some 
one born in adversity and struggling into victory over 
obstacles. This subject was often discussed, involving 
much criticism of the leading novelists. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



A NOTHER element of interest was brought into 
the conversation party that met alternately, 
during the winters of 1827-28, at Dr. Channing's and 
Mr. Phillips's. Dr. Tuckerman joined it, and the 
subject of the education of children yielded to that 
which the several classes of adult society give each 
other. Dr. Channing was interested in this quite as 
much for the sake of the more favored of fortune as 
for that of the "less favored" (as he always designated 
the poor). In his earlier pastoral life* he had come 
into close contact with the laboring class, and greatly 
valued a certain practical wisdom which he said he 
found in them, and thought they had great . advan- 
tages for getting, by being thrown so much on their 
own resources in the struggle for the maintenance 
and education of their children ; that is, if they 
were not left too destitute of the necessaries of life, 
— a condition which was of vast moral advantage to 
the favored of fortune, whose sympathies might be 
prevented from the stagnation which is spiritual 
death, by their exercising them intelligently in equal- 
izing opportunities for the general equality of social 
privileges. 

Could Dr. Channing have despised anything human 
it would have been the effeminate rich, who forget 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 269 



their fellow-beings in a selfish cultivation of their own 
aesthetic tastes and intellect, without considering that 
it is the highest office of beauty and culture to minis- 
ter .to the general happiness cf society. 

Dr. Tuckerman had been the college classmate of 
Dr. Channing and Mr. Phillips, and during the twen- 
ty-five years of his ministry in Chelsea had kept up 
his intimacy with them, especially sympathizing with 
their ministry to the poor. In 1826 the state of his 
health compelled him to relinquish his parish in 
Chelsea ; but as soon as he found himself better he 
undertook, " without money and without price," his 
wonderful ministry to the neglected poor of Boston, 
and found it more entirely interesting than the more 
regular ministry, and believed it to be more useful 
to pastor and people. He did not present himself to 
the poor as an alms-giver, though he grew to be their 
sympathizing counsellor in the economies of their 
laborious lives, which were so inextricably mingled 
with their duties. He found himself warmly wel- 
comed as a spiritual friend and brother merely, and, 
as I once heard him say, alms were never asked of 
him, nor pitiful stories told him of material wants. 
But, of course, he had opportunities of seeing the 
occasional need of material help, and his friend Mr. 
Phillips always stood ready with his charities, infi- 
nitely relieved to be able to rely on Dr. Tuckerman's 
iudgment that these charities should not wound or 
depress self-respect, which Dr. Tuckerman sacredly 
cherished, and declared that he perpetually received 
in his turn lessons in moral ajid spiritual dignity 
which he could not have spared. 



270 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

But this is not the place to give the history of the 
Ministry at Large which Dr. Tuckerman founded, and 
which the Unitarians of Boston in " fraternity," since 
1834, have made so great a part of their church work. 
But 'Dr. Channing's relations to it were so close I 
could not omit the mention of it. His views of it 
can beat be seen in his printed works : Charges to the 
Young Ministers of the Poor, Lectures to the Labor- 
ing Classes on Self-Culture, and especially his elabo- 
rate paper in the last volume of his Works on Dr. 
Tuckerman, after the philanthropist's death. 

It was through Dr. Tuckerman that Dr. Channing 
came into relations with Father Taylor. This very re- 
markable person came to Boston in 1829, appointed to 
preach to sailors by the Methodist Church. Dr. Chan- 
ning said to me one day that Dr. Tuckerman had been 
lamenting that he did not find enough assistants in 
his lay-preaching ; and he had said to Dr. Channing 
so much about Father Taylor's wonderful power of 
addressing the conscience and heart, and the advan- 
tage it was to him to have been himself one of the 
poor, that Dr. Channing suggested he should look 
round and see if among his people he could not find 
another Taylor. " Another Taylor ! " exclaimed Dr. 
Tuckerman, " as well look for another Homer ! " 

This reply seemed to have electrified Dr. Channing, 
and he proceeded to tell me particulars of Father 
Taylor's history and power that he had gathered from 
Dr. Tuckerman. He had been especially interested 
by what Dr. Tuckerman had related of Father Taylor's 
ministry to criminals condemned to death, his object 
always being to bring the criminal to accept the pun- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 271 



'ishment, and endure it as a privilege granted him by- 
God of repairing, in a measure, the wrong he had done 
to society, by magnifying the lav: which puts out of 
the world those whose action is for the injury of 
society. Dr. Tuckerman had said that Father Taylor 
not only made this his aim, but he accomplished it ; 
and he named a certain great criminal (recently exe- 
cuted) who earnestly expressed on the scaffold his 
gratitude that God had given him the opportunity to 
expiate his sin by giving a terrible lesson to others. 

" This," said Dr. Channing, " shows the insight of 
Taylor into the depth of God's love in his moral 
providence, which is indeed no less rare than the 
genius of Homer ! It is moral genius, the identical 
inspiration of Christ. And it is original in this man, 
who has not been instructed by books ; he never read 
Milton, and yet has risen to a truth few have the in- 
sight to discover in Adam's speech to Eve in the 
" Paradise Lost," when he calls upon her to see the 
blessing hidden in the curse, that the poet puts into 
the mouth of the tender Saviour of men, to show 
that it was a blessing greater in their circumstances 
than a continuance of Eden would have been." Father 
Taylor's preaching, he had heard, was attracting all 
classes of people; cultivated Unitarians, lawyers, etc., 
deserted their accustomed seats in their own churches 
to go and hear this natural orator, who was, he under- 
stood, a Virginian of untraceable lineage, whose youth 
had been passed at sea, and who never learned to 
read till in the war of 1812 he was a prisoner at 
Dartmoor, where he not only learned to read the 
Bible, but where he immediately began to preach 



272 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



with wonderful effect; and as soon as he left the 
prison had joined the Methodists, and been an itine- 
rant preacher ever since, sent about to the most un- 
promising places, and designated as the "breaking- 
up plough." Dr. Channing related to me all these 
particulars, and begged me to go and hear this won- 
derful person and give him an account of his sermon. 

As it happened that the very next Sunday Dr. 
Channing did not preach, I went clown to Hanover 
Street, and heard not only the greatest sermon I ever 
heard from Father Taylor, but, I have sometimes 
thought, the greatest outburst of human genius that 
I ever heard ! The text was, " God created man in 
his own image," which, he said, was put into his hands 
as he was going into the pulpit. He paused a few 
moments, and then said : " This is a great text ! I 
never saw, before this moment, how great ! Man is 
the image of God, — bodily, mentally, heartily, politi- 
cally, spiritually ! " He then proceeded to each of 
these " images," stating the ideal of man in personal 
beauty, in splendid operation of intellect, in wealth 
of human affections, in beneficent exercise of power 
over his fellow-men in society, and finally as the son 
of God ; and with a richness of illustration that made 
each of the heads a complete poem in itself. It took 
more than an hour and a half, and his oratory so ex- 
hausted him that it was in a hoarse voice he ended, 
saying that in the afternoon he would ask whether 
man had lost or kept the image in which he was 
created. 

Of course I went to hear him in the afternoon, and 
the verisimilitude of the marvellous contrast he made 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 273 

in his description of man in the condition to which 
sin has reduced him in all these particulars, swept 
his hearers into a depth of sadness correspondent to 
the exaltation he had produced in the morning. He 
ended this jeremiad with the words, " This evening 
we will ask if man can recover the image of God, 
and how ? " And the evening discourse was worthy 
to follow the discourses of the day. 

I went the next afternoon to see Dr. Channing, 
before I had lost the impression of this wonderful 
outpouring, and talked all the afternoon. 

" But you do not mean to say," said Dr. Channing, 
f that all this was said in one day ? " 

" Yes," said I, " and it will take me all the evening 
to finish." 

After this I went to hear Father Taylor preach 
whenever I could, and got acquainted with him and 
his wife, a helpmeet spiritually and in every way. I 
also went with him to love-feasts and other religious 
conferences, sometimes in the chambers of the sick ; 
and faithfully reported to Dr. Channing of all these 
things. 

Father Taylor fraternized very much with the Uni- 
tarians. "When he arrived in Boston to preach to the 
sailors, he was first obliged to find a place to preach in ; 
and the first person to whom he went to ask for means 
was Dr. Channing, who gave him twenty dollars; and 
the next was Balph Waldo Emerson, then the minister 
of the North Church, who not only aided him with 
money, but gave him, the names of many rich mer- 
chants in Boston, who helped him then, and some 
years later formed the Boston Port Society and built 

18 



274 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



the Bethel ; and they were principally Unitarians 
with whom he became intimate, and who were re- 
acted upon by him for their good, in their turn. 
Father Taylor told me he liked the Unitarians, " be- 
cause they enact religion. Their doctrinal errors only 
spoil the preaching of their ministers." I asked him 
how he thought Unitarians could grow in grace when 
they did not believe in the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment and of the Trinity. He said, " They do believe 
in both these doctrines, only they do not know it ; 
for it is impossible for a human being to worship 
God personally, unless he sees him in Jesus Christ. 
We cannot love and rest upon figments of the brain 
[abstractions] ; and because the Unitarians are modest 
and do not pride themselves on their works, while 
they believe Jesus is dear to God because of his, they 
do virtually believe in the atonement, and their belief 
in Christ's merits saves them from sin." 

Dr. Channing was greatly pleased with these state- 
ments, and said, " What a different view of the atone- 
ment and divinity of Christ from the old Orthodox 
one ! " He was much interested to know how it was 
that Father Taylor thought that Unitarian doctrines 
spoiled preaching. I asked Father Taylor, who said 
that " presenting Jesus Christ as a model for imita- 
tion was futile. No life could come from imitation, 
but must be the heart's impulse touched by Jesus 
Christ's promise of 'perfection to those who loved and 
worshipped his self-sacrifice." 

Dr. Channing said, "-He is right about imitation ; 
but there is danger in presenting perfection as an ab- 
solute gift, the honor of Jesus Christ being pledged to 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 275 



it [as he had heard that Father Taylor expressed it], 
for its tendency is to encourage passiveness ; and all 
material life comes from exerting the free will in- 
tentionally." He asked me if I thought the cultiva- 
tion of emotion and enjoyment at the " love feasts," 
of which I told him, gave power of self-control and 
self-direction, in the presence of temptation ? I said 
it did not seem to do so sufficiently ; that the best 
Methodists were fitful in temper and action, notwith- 
standing their doctrine of "perfection" But I thought 
the "love feasts" were of good influence, with Father 
Taylor present to keep them from humbug and non- 
sense. He often spoke to his people of the danger 
of mistaking "passion for religion, and bodily exer- 
cise for the Holy Ghost." 

On the other hand, I reported to Father Taylor Dr. 
Channing's remarks, and read to him some of the 
Doctor's printed sermons about Christ. Father Tay- 
lor listened with devouring interest, and acknowledged 
their great power. He had heard that the sermon at 
Mr. Farley's ordination, on " Likeness to God," was 
blasphemy. But he accepted it all with the greatest 
enthusiasm, not being able to sit still while I read, 
but leaping from his chair and bursting out with 
exclamations of joy. He had heard that Unitarians 
and Dr. Channing did not dwell on the power of God, 
but subjected even Him to the law ; made all His 
power consist in law. I read to him this sermon 
to prove to him that the goodness of God was what 
Dr. Channing thought ought to be worshipped, and 
only so much power as there was in that ; for this 
was a view I had been led to dwell on by Dr. Chan- 



276 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



ning, until I had come to think mere power was 
diabolical. Father Taylor said he delighted to feel 
the Divine Authority. He said the fact of Infinite 
in the relation of Power completed God. 

Both these men were moral in the highest sense ; 
but their genius saw God in the universe, or rather I 
should say in the absoluteness of Being, as well as 
in the relation of Father of Spirits. 

After a time, Dr. Channing said he must himself 
hear Father Taylor preach ; and I went with him one 
Sunday morning when I knew the church w r as not 
so liable to be crowded as on other parts of the 
day and the air was better. The first thing after the 
opening prayer was the christening of an infant, 
which was always a great occasion for Father Taylor. 
He took the child in his arms, and embraced and 
kissed it, exclaiming at its beauty ; he held it up to 
the audience, sitting on his hand, calling on them to 
see this embodiment of the pure Spirit of God, and 
appealing to them to purify themselves to be worthy 
to receive it as they would receive Jesus. The text 
of the sermon that followed was, " Unless ye be con- 
verted and become as one of these little ones, ye shall 
in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." The ad- 
dress to the parents, and to all those present, was, 
though exquisitely beautiful, terrible in the severity 
with which he presented the innocence of childhood 
as the inexorable judge. It was Communion Sun- 
day, and he ended with an invitation to all to come 
to the Supper with, the Lord, who had come into the 
world as a little child to save his people from their 
sins. As I thought Dr. Channing could hardly bear 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 277 



the bad air any longer, after tins protracted and excit- 
ing service, I moved as if to go, but he impressively 
said, "It is impossible to go away from this invita- 
tion.'' When he went up to the altar, Father Taylor, 
who always had something different to say to every 
communicant, addressed him, not as brother, but as 
" father." 

A little while after this, Father Taylor went alone 
with my sister and me to spend an evening with Dr. 
Channing. There was a delightfully free talk all 
round. When we came out, Father Taylor said, — 
! " What a beautiful being Dr. Channing is ! If he 
only had had any education ! " 

I was so much amused at this last exclamation, that 
I told Dr. Channing of it, who said very seriously, 
" Yes ; he is right. What I have needed is an educa- 
tion for my work. The common ideas of education are 
wholly superficial. He has had infinitely the advan- 
tage of me in his nearer approach to all classes of men 
and free range of Nature. His instructors have been 
men in the rush of life's battle, in Dartmoor prison, 
in the hovels of the poor and tempted, where he has 
found not only the victims but the conquerors of 
circumstances ! And this is the reason he is so 
effective a power, reaching from the zenith to the . 
nadir of society ; for all seem to open their hearts 
to him!" He referred to much that I had told him 
of Father Taylor's early life, of which the latter 
had told me. Father Taylor said he was himself 
singularly free from common vices. His joyous 
temperament and uniform health had made the la- 
bors of his youth a perpetual pastime. He enjoyed 



278 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



the exhilaration of seeing the people in any of the 
large gatherings peculiar to Virginia, even in those at 
horse-races ; of the whale-fishery in the Pacific Ocean, 
and the grandeur of Nature in the mountain regions 
of various countries, especially in Labrador. I had 
repeated to the best of my ability his description of 
Labrador, which he called the reservoir of Nature, 
overflowing with animal life, especially with birds. 
I suppose he had visited Labrador in summer. All 
the splendors of the visible universe were mirrored in 
his mind, and poured out in his picturesque language 
to illustrate spiritual facts. But even for these things 
Dr. Channing did not come so near to envying him 
as for the encounters he told me of with the souls of 
the victims of misfortune and sin whom he had won 
to understand and love the justice of God, even in 
bringing them to the scaffold. This was what Dr. 
Channing felt to be a great education ! 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 



HE great article on Milton, which stands at the 



beginning of the last edition of Dr. Channing's 
Works, edited by himself, was first published in the 
winter of 1826-27 in the "Christian Examiner," 
and I find it a flowering into complete expression 
of much of the private conversations I had with him 
in his study ; when, as he sometimes said, we were 
studying together — teacher and preacher — the high 
art of education, on which there is an article of his 
printed in the same volume of his Works, and which 
will show why he granted me the privilege of this 
intimacy. He considered the close relation of par- 
ents to the teachers of their children the most sacred 
of obligations to society. 

At this time I was particularly interested to learn 
and state to myself, for my own and my pupils' men- 
tal discipline, Coleridge's distinction of the reason 
and understanding, the relations of intuition and 
reflection in the discovery and for the demonstration 
of truth ; and this, and the study of the War in 
Heaven of Milton's " Paradise Lost," engaged much 
of our time. What principle within us does Milton's 
Satan symbolize ? What faculties are " the third part 
of heaven " which he suborned ? What is expressed 
by " Michael and his angels," who could not con- 




280 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



quer Satan's army, though themselves unconquerable ? 
What was the secret of Christ's victory, the shine 
of whose " far-off coming " drove the enemy into the 
depths of nothingness, while the angels " veiled their 
faces " as his chariot rolled victorious over a blood- 
less field ? 

I find, in my journal of this date, an expression of 
my own wonder at Dr. Channing's asking me how I 
understood the lines, — 

* ' The cherub Contemplation, 
Guiding her fiery- wheeled car." 

" Why ' fiery- wheeled/ he asked, " to express the act 
of contemplation ? " I concluded that he asked me 
in order to draw me out into that full expression 
which, he says, by defining thought develops the 
understanding. Perhaps he thought I had more im- 
agination than understanding ; but I know T he thought 
imagination is the supreme act of the intuitive reason 
set on fire by the heart. 

We talked of contemplation and its laws ; and 
how opposed to that " day without night " is the 
prevalent revival preaching of Finney and his school. 
He asked me if I thought our " good society," so- 
called, of Boston, cultivated religious contempla- 
tion; whether interest was excited and confidence 
given to those who had the reputation of being ideally 
devout ; whether, in short, religion is, in the eyes 
of people in general, esteemed the crown of charac- 
ter ; whether religions is as much a term of praise as 
just, generous, disinterested? He said he could not 
himself ascertain this, because courtesy to minis- 
ters — or rather to their cloth — checked a frank sin- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



281 



cerity to them. " Is religious conversation common ? 
Is it expedient or desirable ? I (to not mean discus- 
sion of speculative theology, but conversation upon 
the true growth of the soul. Is, or is not, the sym- 
pathy developed by social intercourse a safe engine 
of religion ; or is personal religion likely to be more 
elevated and pure, egotism less likely to contaminate 
it, if kept in reserve ? Will you think over these 
questions and give me your thoughts ? I wish to 
preach on these topics. Who can wonder at any 
want of reverential interest in Christianity when so 
many errors among so-called Christians debase the 
character ! " 

He said Dr. Walker's sermon, that I had lent 
him in manuscript, interested him by its suggestion 
that this age is no harder to affect by preaching than 
any other, only the means used must be different. 
" To produce excitement by preaching is not what I 
wish to do. It is easy enough to produce an effect, — 
but what effect ? It is very easy to be pathetic. 
People do not lack sensibility, but strength to act 
as conscience dictates. Strength comes from steady 
thought/' 

During the ensuing summer (1827) Dr. Follen 
passed some months in Newport with Dr. Channing 
preparing himself to preach, to which he was much 
urged by those who heard him talk at the Sunday- 
school meetings. And I find in his Memoirs, written 
by his wife, that his diary gives a much more com- 
plete account than mine of the conversations at the 
Sunday-school meetings of 1826, and the talks on 
education in 1827-28. My reading of this diary, just 



282 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

now, and of the articles on Napoleon Bonaparte in 
vol. i. of Dr. Chauning's Works, revive my recollec- 
tion of that period when, by my conversations with 
him over the English newspapers which I always 
read to him, and hearing his conversations with Dr. 
Pollen, on the political and social condition of the 
continental nations, I became interested in the his- 
tory of liberty on that side of the Atlantic. 

On his return from Newport, in the fall of 1827, 
Dr. Channing preached on the text, "Peace be to this 
house." He said he was aware there was a necessity 
for certain rules respecting the pulpit, to preserve its 
decorum from the infringements of the ungovernable ; 
but he thought there was often too much formality 
and precision, not enough of the feeling and manner 
with which friends should address friends. He would 
now thank God, with them, in an informal way, for ' 
being restored to them, and finding so many alive 
and well ; and he proposed to speak to them of the 
principles upon which he thought it right, as their 
minister, to act. He enumerated some great moral 
and religious truths that he had preached to them, 
and said time had confirmed these in his mind ; and 
he intended still to enforce them with all his powers, 
• — but he did not purpose to light up the fires of 
sectarian division. Much as he valued his own views 
of God and human duty, he did not think that to 
enforce them was the most important work he had 
to do. There was a cause nearer his heart than any 
particular doctrine, — this w^as the cause of religious 
liberty. 

It was his lot to come forward into life at a 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 283 

period when the great question arose in this country, 
whether human beings were to have their minds 
hoodwinked by one class of the community/ or to 
have the unfettered use of their own judgment. He 
had early felt that his own mind had rights which 
were not to be gainsaid or given up, and that every 
human mind had rights like his own ; and he hoped 
he might say that he had ever been a champion of 
the rights of the human mind, — the unqualified 
right of private judgment. He purposed always to 
maintain this. 

But there were responsibilities connected with the 
right of private judgment. He felt it his duty to 
lead his people, not only to free themselves from all 
views which would restrain their exercise of this 
right, but to exert themselves to exercise it. He 
would not have them rely upon, but rather to ques- 
tion, his own views. He said nothing would give 
him such a feeling of success as to be questioned in 
private. Conversation was often better than public 
discourse to bring out truth. A true view of relig- 
ious liberty, and constant exercise of it, would pre- 
clude sectarian feeling. If all were to be instructed 
by all, none would be governed by any ; and we should 
be as anxious not to impose conformity, as not to 
have it imposed on us. 

He spoke of his own prominence in this contro- 
versy, — he was going to say it was his misfortune ; 
but he checked himself, for he believed difficulty and 
conflict were the element from which power, and all 
that is valuable in human character, were evolved. 
From the aspect of the circumstances around him, 



284 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



he might not be supposed the friend of peace, but he 
loved peace peculiarly, and was inclined to tranquil- 
lity. We must however take care not to " cry Peace, 
peace ! when there is no peace." 

He spoke of his summers in the country ; he could 
discern no party divisions in Nature. The atmos- 
phere, with its supporting influences, embraced all 
beings ; the ocean laved every shore with its sublime 
waves, and opened its bosom to every keel ; the blue 
sky stretched its arch over all countries ; and the 
melodies of woods and streams, winds and birds, were 
breathed on every ear. Often, when he had been in 
a church, listening to men who would make their God 
a partisan, he had felt the gladness of escaping to the 
open air and sky, where a Universal Father shone 
on him from every star, and breathed in every breath 
of air. He said the country, with its grand forms, 
tranquillized us, enlarging our charity and liberality ; 
yet he was glad to leave it for the city, and bring to 
his people what he could of its influences. 

He spoke of methods of communicating religion, — 
methods analogous to Nature's operations for beauty 
and life, — and contrasted them with the revival 
system, which, as carried on now, was calculated to 
deceive and depress, and even rob men of their facul- 
ties, and to produce a religion which was certainly 
low in its character. 

He said it was not his sole work to defend religious 
liberty, and give impulse to the free exercise of the 
faculties ; but also to help them to discipline and ele- 
vate their hearts. But many people had false ideas 
of a minister's power and duty in this respect ; they 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 285 



came to church to he impressed, and to be made to act, 
by the minister. "But I cannot act for you; I can- 
not save you ; I cannot lend you my understanding 
and heart, any more than my limbs : nor would it be 
desirable for you, could I, by the word of my mouth, 
give you holy temper and all the graces. You would 
then be but machines ; the glory of free agents would 
be gone." He bade them distrust the eloquence that 
comes like a torrent, bears away the faculties, and 
overwhelms the soul in emotion. He described this 
kind of eloquence, and contrasted it with another 
kind, which awakened all the faculties and gave the 
mind full possession of itself, inspiring courage, vigor, 
power : he " coveted " this kind of power. Instead of 
coming to church to be acted upon, they should come 
to get means of acting on themselves. Because they 
were interested and excited, and assented, they flat- 
tered themselves they were growing wiser and better ; 
but it was a fearful mistake. " I come to speak of 
the promises of Christianity, not to make you effemi- 
nate by a self-reference in these things ; but to 
satisfy the reason and the heart on the most interest- 
ing subjects of human thought and feeling ; to speak 
of the retributions of another world, not, by exag- 
gerated representations, to terrify the mind into a 
state of passive recipiency, but to unfold the nature 
of sin, and evolve that salutary fear which preserves 
from sin." He did not wish to banish all excitement 
from the church, but to let them see that excitement . 
is not religion ; and that minds full of high ideas 
were not virtuous necessarily, for ideas must be elab- 
orated into virtue by individual prayer and exertion. 



286 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



Having recapitulated his objects, — defending relig- 
ious liberty, republishing truth, stimulating personal 
exertion and private judgment by the promises and 
threatenings of Christianity, and a discriminating of 
moral progress from transient excitement either of 
mind or body, — he went on to speak of the many 
sad events that had occurred in his absence ; more 
than he ever before remembered to occur in so short 
a time. He said he had lived long enough to see de- 
cay written on every human thing ; that the day of 
spring-feeling had passed with him, and the changes 
of Nature become familiarized to his mind, and to 
him death was less wonderful than the continuance 
of life. He enlarged soothingly on this, and said 
there were those to whom death was annihilated by 
the approximation faith has made of the two worlds. 

In the evening I went to see him. He described his 
summer in the country, with its employments ; and 
said he had been " well enough to do something all 
the time, — an unwonted happiness." He had been a 
good deal on the sea-shore, and enjoyed the ocean 
more than since he was a boy. " The children have 
been well," said he, " and the cup has overflowed ; it 
has been that fulness of happiness that gives a pre- 
sentiment of change ; for you know the order of Prov- 
idence," — and he smiled acquiescence. He talked 
of his journey to Niagara, and the Finney revivals 
in New York, — in whose track he went. He said 
it was " as if a hurricane had passed, and the moral 
effect was bad." He related things he had heard, — 
on the best authority, — as said in the pulpit ; and I 
told him it seemed to me that people with reason and 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



287 



ordinary sensibility to God should refuse to listen to 
such blasphemy. We talked of the source and effect 
of this habit of blasphemy, when preachers under- 
took to declare themselves the messengers of God, 
and broke through every right of personal reserve. 
His report corresponded with the pamphlets writ- 
ten on all sides on the Troy and Oneida revival; 
" but," he added, " the tempest has exhausted itself, 
I think." 

He spoke of a charming letter he had had from 
Mrs. Hemans, who "spoke of Wordsworth growing 
blind, and his bearing it with great sweetness." He 
also read a letter from Lucy Aikin. I told him I 
heard he did not like Miss Aikin. He said he was 
not pleased with her when he saw her in England ; 
but he had made a mistake, — she was an excellent 
woman. I have heard since that Dr. Channing's in- 
fluence on her, at that time/made a revolution in her 
character. 

On Monday evening he talked of Swedenborgian- 
ism and other " fanciful views of religion." He said 
the Swedenborgians spoke much on the practical 
effect of giving a human form to God, but he never 
got one of them to say what this form was, what was 
the color of the eyes, etc. It was all mist, and 
amounted to nothing. He said the doctrine of Cor- 
respondences, or rather the Swedenborgian Dictionary 
of Correspondences, was the most terrible fetter on 
the imagination, and its effect must be to deaden 
that faculty wholly, and at length to destroy all self- 
activity of mind. 

In my letter to Mrs. Sullivan of Nov. 1, 1827, I 



288 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



tell her the subject of the sermon I had just heard 
was "Eeligion is a moral exercise," not something 
external which the soul takes in by sensibility. " It 
is the soul working according to its highest laws, the 
individual feeling in unison with its highest general 
instincts. A man in becoming religious consciously 
passes out of that part of himself which connects 
him with the animal creation into that part of him- 
self which unites him with God. The precepts and 
thoughts and habits of virtue are binding, because 
they make the soul consistent with itself; because 
they produce moral perfection ; because when fol- 
lowed, they leave no faculty unemployed, no feeling 
unsatisfied. Mere decree, mere power, does not make 
certain precepts, thoughts, and feelings right, but their 
adaptation to harmonize and perfect the soul itself. 
God is not the supreme object of the soul because he 
has infinite power, but because he is infinitely good. 
He commands us to worship him because to do so 
perfects us" He said it was necessary that we should 
understand this subject, because by our understanding 
of it was the character of our religion determined. 
Morality is eternal, not an arbitrary decree. God has 
no end but our good in binding us up to the necessity 
of following the laws of our souls. 

"The error prevalent on this subject is owing to the 
ambiguous manner in which theologians tell of God's 
acting for his own glory. This is dangerous language. 
To a selfish God would a selfish worship be offered, 
and not the sacrifice of the whole soul in a transport 
of veneration. It is the common idea that a direct 
act of homage to God is the service most pleasing to 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 289 

Him, but God looks with as much favor on the hom- 
age we pay to goodness in the soul of another being as 
that we pay to His own. He would have us love jus- 
tice, — not justice as displayed in His own character 
only, but wherever displayed. To overlook it in our 
humblest neighbor's mind, He considers as impious as 
not to worship it in Himself. He would have us forget 
ourselves in the glow of goodness displayed in others : 
it is the glow He wants, and not the homage to Him- 
self. He would only have us love Him- supremely, 
because justice and benevolence, the highest laws of 
the soul, are completest in Himself. So there is no 
exclusiveness in religion ; an act of mercy involving 
self-sacrifice is as high an act of religion, and perhaps 
a higher, than a prayer to God." 

These were the most interesting thoughts, and I 
tell Mrs. Sullivan that I never heard any sermon 
from him that seemed to me so sublime in moral 
tone. It did not please people so much as usual : it 
had no rhetoric in it at all. But I was pleased to 
find its sublime stoicism congenial to infant inno- 
cence. Little Eebecca Phillips said to me, when I 
asked her on Monday what Dr. Channing preached 
about, that she could " not tell the sermon ; it was 
all about God's not commanding us because we were 
his, but because it was right," — which, as Mr. Eus- 
sell said, was "the poetry of the discourse," and 
Dr. Channing said, when I told him of it, " I wish 
I could believe many understood me so well." 

I find a sermon in my journal about this time, 
analogous to the above, on the text, " The fear of the 
Lord is to hate evil." He defined fear in this text, as 

19 



290 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



reverence, not dread ; and illustrated this definition by 
numerous Scriptural quotations. His object was to 
identify religion and morality. Eeligion was the law 
of God, morality the law of the human mind ; but 
these two are one. Some would have it that the law 
of the mind was only felt with regard to social rela- 
tions ; but he contended that the mind legislated on 
our relation to our creator also, and piety was strictly 
a moral exercise. " Eeligion includes all moral exer- 
cises, even this ; and thus leads back to morality. 
For why does religion teach us to love God ? All 
sects will answer, Because he is good and just ; but 
how are we to have the slightest perception of these 
attributes except by the faint image of them in 
ourselves and our fellow-creatures ? The test of our 
religion is, then, our feelings and actions towards our 
fellow-creatures. If justice in God excites our rever- 
ence, justice in ourselves produces self-respect, and 
in our neighbor invokes our love. If we are unsel- 
fishly grateful to God, we shall be grateful to our 
neighbor. Neither mere fervor towards God, nor an 
imagination exalted by the thought of him, is the 
/ear of the Lord!' 

This idea is the same as Dr. Kirkland's, when he 
says " we have as much piety as charity, and no more." 
But Dr. Channing went into details, and boldly char- 
acterized a great deal of worship as no better than 
" adulation and flattery." The slightest unkindness 
to any human thing was more atrocious in the sight 
of God than the omission of any rites of homage 
to Him. Praises were of no worth but as the last 
breathings of a spirit that has spent itself in active 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 291 



conformity to the God who rains equally upon the 
just and unjust. He said he knew but one objection 
that could be made to this view of the subject, "that 
it would thin the ranks of the 'professedly religious. 
Was this an evil ? As in ancient times men offered 
sacrifices of fruits and animals in lieu of the heart, 
so now they offer exercises of imagination, intellect, 
and emotions in lieu of the moral actions of self- 
sacrifice and social goodness. But heaven is the true 
soul, and to be reached only by the exercise of the soul 
according to its laws, with which it should be our con- 
stant labor to identify our sense of God's will. We 
know God only by these moral laws in ourselves." 

In another sermon of this winter, preached on " Be 
not conformed to this world ; but be ye transformed 
in the renewing of your mind/' Dr. Channing said 
Wakefield translated it more exactly, " Conform not 
to this world ; but transform yourselves in the renew- 
ing of your minds." He continued : " We have all a 
measure of power over our ow T n minds. If we cannot 
comprehend it, yet we feel this is true. This moral 
power, like sensibility and understanding, is the gift of 
God. We may not comprehend how these are gifts, 
but the fact that they are so imposes on us duties. 
It is a crime to deny the power we have ; we must 
use it to keep our minds up to their highest laws, 
and to our best instincts. To deny this power is to 
subvert the very foundation of morals. The capacity 
of morality is the distinction of man in the creation. 
The elements produce the effect of God's will without 
internal power. Man obeys by internal power; and 
hence morality. 



292 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



" What, then, are our duties ? First, we must not 
give up our characters to be moulded by others ; for 
we are individuals, and have duties arising from our 
peculiar constitution of mind, degree of sensibility, 
etc. Each one requires peculiar self-denials and in- 
dulgences, and our relations to others can be seen 
fully by no one but ourselves. Another's conscience 
cannot be transferred to our bosom ; nor if it could, 
would it show us our duty : sometimes another may 
trace an outline for us, but we must fill it up our- 
selves. Besides, we may not give up to others because 
in general others are not Christian; and when they 
are, we hear God second-hand through them. Words 
and actions are their means of testifying what God 
says to them ; but these are imperfect in themselves, 
and imperfectly understood by us. Though God 
speaks in every man's mind, we can understand Him 
perfectly only in our oivn. We are not however to 
place ourselves beyond all influence ; indeed we can- 
not. But we must modify the influences we receive, 
— select them. This is the most important mode of 
exerting our power, and unless we remember this the 
best influences may injure us." 

There was another sermon on this text, but I find 
I did not write a letter about it, because Mrs. Sullivan 
came into town to hear it. The subject was " Indi- 
viduality of Character;" which could only be pre- 
served by not conforming. " There is a charm," said 
he, "in individuality of character; singleness of heart 
claims everybody's sympathy, and it is too justly said 
that religion generally fetters this naturalness. But 
all the difficulty arises from the error prevalent, that 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



293 



perfection is a uniform thing ; and this error arises 
from the poor way in which religion is too often 
preached. Perfection in the moral world is as various 
in its forms as it is in the natural world. Every mind 
has a beauty of its own — pecidiar. Now we are 
called to follow the Saviour ; but in what ? — in his 
specific actions, or in that general principle of his 
of acting from his own mind ? In whatever way he 
was directed by God — even if we cannot understand 
it — we may be sure he was not a machine. His 
spirit was infinitely comprehensive, being that of uni- 
versal benevolence. But each of us must exercise 
this spirit in our own peculiar way, and leave it 
to God, who tuned every string, to harmonize the 
whole." 

Another sermon begins, " This is the love of God, 
that we keep his commandments." He spoke of love, 
its indefinable nature, — the clinging of the soul to 
another ; its modifications by its various objects ; 
the peculiarity of each of our affections. How, then, 
is the love of God characterized ? He is infinite, 
happy, everlasting ! Each of these attributes gives 
something peculiar to the love with which he is nat- 
urally regarded by us. He then went on to say how 
this was, and distinguished the love of God from all 
other love in its character and effects. 

Then he emphatically guarded his hearers against 
a mistake too many fall into. No one must test the 
sincerity of his love to God by the description of it 
he had just given ; he had spoken of it as it appeared 
to his own mind : but every mind probably has its 
peculiar way of regarding God, and every mind must 



294 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

regard him . in its own way, or there would be some- 
thing factitious in place of piety. He thought much 
of the superficialness of religion in the community 
was to be traced to the habit of persons testing them- 
selves by the piety of others, — they wished to feel 
alike ; but the uniformity -of experiences was always 
a proof of the want of reality somewhere. This was a 
kind of conscientious hypocrisy however, not decep- 
tion prepense. But in one point all meet, and that 
is the most important one. All real love of God is 
practical, it results in obedience. To some His as- 
pect — first seen in sorrow perhaps — is melancholy ; 
to some He comes a protector and guardian ; to some, 
all-benignant sympathy. But wherever the love of 
God is real it produces obedience. 

Here is probably the place for another undated ser- 
mon on the text, " That you may believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and have life through his name." Faith 
with the apostles was inculcated as a virtue, and Eter- 
nal Life promised to it as a reward. What did this 
mean ? What faith is a virtue ? Hereditary faith, — 
that which we passively imbibe ? But there was 
none of this at the time these words were spoken ; 
for then thought came before belief: now they be- 
lieve generally before they think. And this differ- 
ence of order makes a vast difference in the faith, — 
not in its favor. He would not depreciate the advan- 
tages of Christian education, or of the pure moral at- 
mosphere, when the mind's own power seconded these 
influences: but it was not the faith of which the 
Scriptures spoke. Multitudes never second heredit- 
ary faith with thought of their own. Moreover, in 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



295 



the apostles' day, hereditary faith, now the ally of 
Chistianity, was its foe, and made Jew and Gentile 
strong against it, — it being worthy of a better 
foundation than tradition and prejudice. There was 
a meaner faith however than hereditary faith, — the 
faith of fashion ; that which was pleased into ex- 
istence by the good odor of respectability, and the 
worldly advantages attending a profession of faith 
where there was an established Church. This faith 
could not have existed in the Apostolic Age, when 
to acknowledge a crucified Master was still an 
ignominy. 

Nor was the faith of reasoning in this age neces- 
sarily a virtue. It might have been in the Apostolic 
Age, when to begin to reason required a thousand vir- 
tues, and the prejudices built on the best as well as 
worst principles of our nature must have been laid 
aside, and worldliness and self-love sacrificed. But 
noiv, — when the triumph of Christianity is com- 
plete, and nothing is to be sacrificed for it, and the 
man sits down in a quiet closet to read its accumu- 
lated evidence and its illustration by the genius and 
virtues of centuries, — speculative assent is reduced 
to its intrinsic worth or worthlessness in our eyes. 

The faith of reasoning however is a good reserve for 
the mind when the hour of calamity comes, and there 
is no leisure to reflect. But the true faith, he thought, 
is the one founded on a knowledge of one's own nat- 
ure, of its wants, dangers, capacities, infinite longings 
after truth, virtue, and immortality. These fine in- 
stincts call for it, as well as that painful consciousness 
of sin which some minds are too true to themselves to 



296 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



stifle or set aside. The truest evidence of Christianity 
is the correspondence of its principles and precepts, its 
hopes and promises, with the wants and capacities of 
our nature. It might seem paradoxical to say so per- 
haps, but he believed the best evidence of miracles was 
from within. Eatiocinating and speculative minds are 
reluctant at first to give up the absolute uniformity of 
the order of Nature ; but let a man explore his own 
nature, and he will find there something to which 
nothing in material Nature corresponds. Let him 
have weighed the solemn import of that word sin; 
let him but once have been fully conscious of his de- 
sire of immortality ; let his soul have waked to its in- 
herent thirst for perfection of nature ; let the cry of 
the creature for the Creator be once uttered w 7 ithin 
him, — and he will see the deep foundations for mira- 
cles laid in his soul, and believe ; because it is most 
reasonable, and explains his sense of creativeness. 
On the other hand, it is impossible, he thought, for a 
man to understand the evidence of Christianity who 
is not in earnest, and does not feel an abhorrence of 
sin. The moral evidence binds it to our nature, en- 
ters into our being, defies all that the universe holds 
of temptation and calamity to wrench it from the 
soul's grasp. It grows of itself, and purifies the soul 
it enters. This faith, in short, is the heart and intel- 
lect in highest exercise, creating a corresponding 
moral atmosphere. There are some minds to which 
ignorance, error, and sin are intolerable, — a burden, 

o 77 

a chain, a disease ! To them Christianity comes, and 
is instantly a living faith, powerful to salvation. 
. I tell Mrs. Sullivan, at the end of this letter, that 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 297 



my sketch is wholly inadequate. In another letter is 
a sketch of a sermon on Humility, the cherishing 
atmosphere of all virtues, and in itself a virtue ob- 
vious to reason. But Christianity makes it a leading 
virtue, which proves Christianity to take the pro- 
foundest view of the human mind, and to be of 
divine origin ; since humility is the condition of all 
moral and all intellectual superiority, opposing the 
narrowness of ignorance and the sterility of prejudice. 

He did not think first-rate minds, but only the 
second-rate class, ever had any pride of intellect. 
" Genius generally has simplicity, is delicate, retiring, 
not seldom with painful sensibility to censure, yet 
seldom thrown off the poise by praise. This highest 
genius never acts from love of applause, but must be 
touched to life by a finer, more ethereal breath ; by 
the forms of Nature, or irrepressible strivings from 
within, in answer to the gleamings of excellence from 
its high original. In its highest hour man's censure 
and applause are alike nothing, for the soul is ab- 
sorbed, as it were, in God. The instinctive tenden- 
cies of the noblest minds teach us the value 01 
humility. When the alliance of humility and genius 
is broken, degeneracy begins. Humility looks up- 
ward ; consequently it ignores the contests of emula- 
tion, and delivers the mind from the assaults of envy 
and malice, while second-rate minds perceive rivals 
and have the spirit of emulation. The mind that 
pauses to exult in its elevation above another has its 
vision turned clown the path, has no access to ex- 
haustless fountains, but is wasted in measuring the 
shallowness of streams already forded." 



298 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

He thought the highest genius was not ambitious, 
and showed how ambition degrades second-rate minds, 
shedding poison on the fields of literature, allying 
vice and beauty, and infusing disorder and death. 
No work of genius is immortal that does not spring 
from disinterested love of truth and excellence ; the 
w 7 ork of political genius not sanctified by love is 
ephemeral, for how narrow the mind must be that is 
concentrated on itself when the destinies of nations 
are at stake ! The statesman who was not humble 
could not see far, could not comprehend the future. 
History is a record of disappointed plans, and com- 
mon life a picture of the impotence of individual 
action, founded in anything else than humility and 
disinterestedness. And humility and disinterested- 
ness are necessary to all the virtues. The common 
feeling of mankind denies the name of virtue where 
there is the least appearance of self-love. What is 
benevolence if not free from self-seeking ? He con- 
sidered the relation of all the virtues to humility, and 
the finest part was where he considered piety. 

But, as I tell Mrs. Sullivan, this was one of the 
indescribable sermons. 

In conversation that evening, speaking of the Mis- 
sionary enterprise, he said : " Possibly Christianity 
will never be understood till all varieties of mind 
have worked on it. Then those features that are 
adapted to human nature generally will take a 
more prominent place, and those things it affords to 
meet individual and peculiar wants, in particular 
cases, the subordinate place. At present we have 
gained little from the Missionaries ; they do not 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



299 



encourage the spontaneous action of the convert's 
own mind, but crush it with authority and fear. 
There is little prospect of success at present. The 
doctrine of the Trinity is an insuperable barrier to 
the Mahometan, the Jewish, and even the Hindu 
mind." 

Speaking in one of our meetings at Mr. Phillips's, 
on the study of Nature, he said it was curious to 
see how dissatisfied children are with Nature; how 
they pull everything to pieces, and like to put things 
together in grotesque and monstrous combinations. 
They are creative. He thought their activity should 
be taken advantage of; they should be taught to draw, 
to model, to get command of musical instruments, etc. ; 
they should be allowed to make collections of miner- 
als, shells, etc. But natural philosophy should not 
be studied till the mind was able to enter into it 
religiously. Ideas are divine, and should never be 
regarded otherwise ; laws are ideas, insights. We 
should not be satisfied with keeping children upon 
palpable realities ; sensible truth was not the most 
important. He liked the study of languages. In the 
process of learning the meaning of a sentence in 
another language there is a great deal of exercise of 
the mind's highest powers. In finding the meaning 
of a sentence the idea gleams and fades ; the arrange- 
ment of the w T ords is a great act of judgment, modi- 
fied by various considerations of etymology and syn- 
tax ; then comes the sense of beauty in the perfect 
whole. This is preparing the mind for its future ex- 
ercises. A great deal of truth is shadow}^, veiled in 
material forms, w T hose light gleams and fades. Un- 



300 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



less this kind of activity, the search after the invisi- 
ble, is begun early, he feared the mind would never 
enter upon these highest exercises. 

In another letter I speak of Dr. Channing's talk 
on Matthew xxiv. in a teachers' meeting. He said 
Cappe had labored to prove that it all referred to the 
destruction of Jerusalem, while ~most Christians be- 
lieved it had a double meaning, and referred to a last 
great day of judgment. Dr. Channing did not wholly 
coincide with either view of the subject ; he thought 
it referred to both present and future judgment of a 
spiritual nature, but he did not believe in a simulta- 
neous judgment of mankind. He thought this idea 
prevailed among believers from a too literal interpre- 
tation of the parabolic mode of expression. The 
imagery was taken from the tribunals of the East to 
express a spiritual fact. The Son of Man not only 
comes upon us at death, but is always coming; comes 
upon us suddenly at each epoch of our progress. 
Eemarkable events throw on the Christian religion 
brighter evidences, and open on us personally new 
views of Jesus Christ's character. We should watch 
these comings of the Son of Man if we would pre- 
serve faith on the earth. 

There was one most original sermon of which I 
must speak. It was on Death, in which he set forth 
that, in the sense of its bein^ a change of man's rela- 
tion to the universe, it was in the original plan of crea- 
tion; and the death brought in by sin was quite another 
thing. He unconsciously gave exactly Swedenborg's 
view of the fact of natural death, which only our 
sinfulness and the intellectual stupidity induced by 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 301 



spiritual ignorance made painful to sense. He ar- 
gued from the impossibility of the earth affording 
room for all the men born. 

It was not till July, 1828, that Dr. Follen, who had 
been meanwhile a professor in the Divinity-school of 
Cambridge, presented himself before the Suffolk As- 
sociation for admission, introduced by a letter from 
Dr. Channing, and read a history of his European life 
and studies, and a statement of the faith and doctrines 
that they had wrought in him. Immediately after- 
wards he was married to Miss E. L. Cabot ; but she 
had been very much disappointed that Dr. Channing 
did not come up from Newport to perform these offi- 
ces in person, and attributed it to a coldness tow- 
ards Dr. Follen that I was so sure did not exist that 
I went myself to Newport to verify my persuasion. 
And it proved as I had surmised, that it was only his 
extreme respect for Dr. Follen that impelled him to 
avoid all appearance of patronizing or seeming to take 
an attitude of ecclesiastical superiority to a man 
whom he so unaffectedly regarded as his superior in 
learning and Christian character ; while it was his 
conscientious care of his tery delicate health, in order 
that as early as possible he might resume his own 
pulpit duties, which made him judge it wrong to go 
up to Boston in that hot season. He wrote to them 
both most delightful letters, which I wish I could 
procure and insert. The one to Miss Cabot was an 
epithalamium that glorified marriage. ' 

I remained a month in Newport, and saw Dr. Chan- 
ning play. It gave me a new idea of holiness to see 
him in the daily enjoyment of Nature, into which he 



302 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



imperatively took us all. Had I space at my com- 
mand, I would insert here what I wrote in my journal 
of this visit. 

Soon after my return, I received the following 
letter : — 

Newport, August 11, 1828. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I am no letter writer, but I 
feel as if I owed you a letter, after the pleasure which you 
have given Mrs. Channing and myself by your visit, and 
by writing us so freely. It was a kind Providence that 
sent you here, although you failed of the chief object which 
brought you to us. And this is not uncommon. In many 
of our pursuits the incidental advantages are greater than 
those intended and direct ; and we are compensated for 
disappointment by unexpected good. 

Your visit was very acceptable to us ; not that yon were 
half as agreeable as you might or should have been ; not 
that you enjoyed half as much as you might or should 
have done ; for the " awe of the preacher " was upon you, 
and you had not enough of self-respect and of self-forget- 
ting love to be at ease before a fellow-being. Still we 
were glad to have you with us ; for notwithstanding your 
diminished power of pleasing you gave much pleasure ; and 
then you gave us an opportunity of understanding you bet- 
ter than we had done. And why may I not tell you that 
you passed through the furnace of a nearer inspection and 
daily scrutiny, not only unhurt, but with increased favor ? 

It seems from your letter that you have confidence 
enough in the strength of my virtue to entrust me with all 
the praise the world awards me ; may I not put the same 
trust in you % I remember a friend once said I injured 
you by attention. I think not. I think most human 
beings are benefited by knowing the favorable estimate 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING 



303 



formed of them by others. I "believe more of gratitude 
and kindness than of vanity and pride are called forth by 
expressions of esteem and honor ; and a benevolent mind 
is greatly strengthened and encouraged to labor when it 
sees itself capable of acting on other minds with some 
power. Superficial souls may be elated by praise ; but I 
apprehend there are not a few who have never a deeper 
feeling of deficiency, or are more conscious of obligation, 
than when approved. They are drawn to others by intel- 
ligent praise, not raised above them. ? 

May I not, then, say that you left us better friends than 
you found us ? You have, I think, a true perception of 
what is good, pure, and divine in human nature, and es- 
pecially in children. You have a true respect for the 
mind of a child, and understand what Jesus meant when 
he said, "Whosoever receiveth this child in my name re- 
ceiveth me." You would not for the universe injure the 
young mind for the sake of making, a show of it and 
building up your school or your reputation. 

I was happy to be confirmed in these impressions, be- 
cause they authorize me to continue Mary with you. How 
long I may do so, as I have always told you, is uncertain ; 
because, be your powers what they may, events may prove 
that she does not receive the good which a parent must 
never sacrifice. But I hope more than ever from your 
care. Not that I think you blameless. I fear that — like 
a friend whose infirmities are my daily burden — you are 
more given to general speculation than to the details that 
are so necessary to a teacher, and that you sometimes talk 
above your pupils, and bewilder instead of enlighten them. 
In exteriors you are not yet a faultless model to your chil- 
dren, though I have the great pleasure of saying that you 
are sensibly improved. I am not sure that you are always 
as mild and patient as you should be. — Here is a list of 



304 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



blemishes enough to neutralize my praise, perhaps ! But 
you will understand the use of both. You have a noble 
mind in its moral and intellectual power ; I want to see 
it unfolded in a manner worthy of itself and its Author. 

I have written a long letter, but cannot promise another 
soon. I shall however be truly grateful to you for writing 
whenever the spirit prompts and no duty forbids. My 
affectionate regards to your family. Your account of your 
conversation with E. and Dr. F. gratified me much. 

Very truly your friend, 

William E. Channing. 

I give this letter, and also the next, to show the 
delicate and sincere interest Dr. Channing had in 
individuals; which was as remarkable as the impar- 
tiality of his Christian love. The union in him of 
these extreme contrasts constituted his own remark- 
able personality, and made his friendship so quicken- 
ing to the private heart as well as so severe a reproof 
to exacting egotism. 

Some ladies of Boston had asked the venerable 
Hannah Adams to sit for her portrait, and at their 
request she wrote for them a short memoir of her life. 
At the same time she was very desirous of earning a 
hundred dollars to relieve a sister who was in dis- 
tress, and one lady proposed she should publish this 
autobiography. She shrank from doing it, but was 
sorely tempted by the motive. Having heard that 
she had exclaimed, " How 7 I wish I knew what Dr. 
Channing would think!" I wrote to him, and received 
this answ 7 er to my letter : — 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 305 

Newpoet, August 16, 1826. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — You must not refer more 
cases of conscience to me than you can help, for my deci- 
sions I fear seldom satisfy. In the present case I am 
compelled to differ from you, and yet I shall not at all 
murmur if you give no heed to my opinion. I cannot 
advise Miss Adams to publish, and chiefly for two reasons : 

(1) Her sensitiveness makes it improper to expose her to 
the kind of remark which the novel publication would 
provoke. She would probably hear what would torture 
her. I would not subject her to the trial for ever so much 
money. The mere suggestion that she had been wanting 
in delicacy and womanly reserve might shorten her days. 

(2) An example which should lead your sex to send out 
their own histories while living would, I think, do the 
female character no good. I have a general objection to 
this kind of writing in my own sex, — how much more in 
yours ! A man whose history is the history of his time 
may publish his memoirs ; but, in general, those of us in 
whom posterity may feel an interest will do well to leave 
their memoirs for the friends of their reputation to publish 
after their death. 

As to your engaging in the " Souvenir," I hope you will 
think well before you undertake it. You have two great 
interests to take care of, — your health and your school ; 
the first for the last. Let nothing interfere with these. If 
you can undertake anything consistently with these, which 
will benefit you, I shall be truly glad. 

Yours affectionately, 

W. E. Changing. 



20 



CHAPTEE XIX. 

TV/TY reminiscences of Dr. Channing are not only 
inextricably mixed up with the general inter- 
ests of humanity (in which he took so vivid an in- 
terest), the improvement of education, the progress of 
political liberty and development in Europe as well 
as in America, the healthy relations of the rich and 
the poor, — but they follow his subtiler spiritual sym- 
pathies into the relations of the soul of man with its 
inspiring Divine Father. 

As early as 1828 there occurred a schism in the 
Quaker Church of New England, or rather there was 
a revival of old George Fox's outburst of faith in the 
Living God versus Established Churches, — which is 
sometimes confounded with a movement made by 
Elias Hicks in the Middle States, who at the Yearly 
Meeting of 1819, in Philadelphia, had proposed ab- 
stinence from the products of slave labor as a renewed 
testimony of the Society against slavery. This had 
started up the mercantile interest that was quietly 
reposing on the righteous act of the Society, which a 
hundred years before had cleared its skirts of slave- 
holding for themselves. To silence the voice which 
would wake up the spirit that had gone to sleep, 
every rule of the " discipline " was broken ; and in 
1827, in the spirit of peace, the so-called Hicksites 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 307 



withdrew from the Arch-street Meeting of Philadelphia, 
and the bulk of the Quakers all over the country also 
withdrew from those who sympathized with the Arch- 
street intolerance, — making just the same split in Qua- 
kerdom that has taken place in every American sect, 
and begins to be seen even in the Eoman Catholic 
communion, as liberal and conservative wings. 

The movement in New England was quite inde- 
pendent of the Hicksite protest. It arose from the 
preaching of a remarkable woman at Lynn, named 
Mary Newhall, who, as she afterwards told me, had 
no thought of saying anything with which every 
experienced Christian would not on reflection " feel 
unity," as their phrase is, when she announced that the 
Spirit had declared to her that the Society was falling 
into an analogous error with those whom George Fox 
denounced as dangerously relying on steeple-houses, 
surplices, and ritual ; for they had come to think 
their style of speech and dress, and certain cant 
phrases (which she designated), had efficacy to save 
from sin. Immediately a conservatism that had 
grown up, idly reposing on these things, manifested 
itself in violent opposition, precluding the under- 
standing of what were the ideas they at first had 
symbolized ; and it convinced her that the evil she 
had touched was more deeply grounded than she had 
thought. She therefore persisted in her testimony, 
but in a way strictly consistent with the " discipline,'' 
which was set aside by those who were determined to 
silence or excommunicate her. A few spiritually- 
minded elders and the young gave her glad audience. 

I first heard of the schism from the conservative 



308 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



Quakers of Salem, with some families of whom I had 
been intimate from my infancy ; though the Quakers 
of Xew England at that time were nearly as much 
cut off from " the world's people " as are the castes 
of India from each other. A few rich merchants, the 
exigencies of whose business had compelled them to 
study French, began the change that has taken place 
since, by sending their daughters to my mother's 
school, where they became interested in literature. 
They now wrote to me of Mary Xewhall's preaching 
from the report her opponents gave of it, mingled 
with a great deal that was entirely false as to fact ; 
declaring that instead of " minding the light" of 
Christ, she announced herself to be that light, and 
that she could walk on the water like Jesus Christ. 

Dr. Channing, hearing of these pretensions from my 
report of the representations of my friends, expressed 
his doubts ; remarking that whenever the spirit of 
prophecy renewed itself and questioned the word of 
" the scribes," this cry of heresy was raised, as it had 
been against Jesus himself. He suspected that Mary 
Xewhall was not truly appreciated, though it was 
not unlikely that she had made some exaggeration in 
stating the visions of her soul. He knew she was a 
friend of a venerable woman in JsTew Bedford, who 
also professed to " walk in love." regardless of many 
Quaker observances ; and who believed the " inward 
light" of Christ to be an appreciable director of the 
individual soul in all the actions of life. He had 
seen a niece of hers, a much cultivated woman, who 
had come over from England, and was very much inter- 
ested and impressed by this spiritually-minded aunt, 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



309 



and she held the same doctrine in a very literal way. 
She thought herself directed even in such outward 
matters as whether she should accept an invitation 
to go down the harbor in a steamboat. He said he 
had objected to this, that, if the intellect was not ex- 
ercised to determine action in outward matters, it 
would be extinguished from want of activity; that 
Providence plainly intimates that we are to act on 
one another's minds, and have the responsibilities 
of finite relations. She replied, that there had been 
| too much human agency " about her mind ; and he 
said doubtless it was true in her case. 

The next week after our conversation on this sub- 
ject Dr. Channing began a series of sermons on the 
Influences of the Holy Spirit, from the text, " If ye, 
being evil, know how to give good gifts to your 
children, how much more will your Heavenly Father 
give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him." 

In looking over the notes of these sermons, I find 
them so imperfectly expressing what I remember of 
their careful discriminations and profound insights 
into the reciprocation of the human and divine, pre- 
serving the unity of spiritual substance without con- 
founding the distinctions of personality, that I am 
not willing to give here only what I then wrote down. 
These sermons, and many others on practical Chris- 
tian discipline, ought to be printed from the original 
manuscripts ; and I wish those who have the custody 
of these precious papers would publish a volume, 
which would make Dr. Channing known as the com- 
forting shepherd of souls that he was to a great many 
more than he himself was aware of. It would give 



310 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



glimpses of this side of his remarkable character that 
I have, with many misgivings, ventured to give slight 
sketches of in the reports of his sermons which are 
contained in these Reminiscences. Of course, I have 
done justice to no sermon, but I have thought the fact 
of what I remembered becoming a part as it were of 
myself was an intimation of its vital quality. In 
regard, however, to the great subject of the absolute 
communion of the divine and human, I feel it neces- 
sary that exactly his words, and not merely the im- 
pressions strained through my mind, should be given. 
I was not so capable then, as perhaps I might be 
now, to apprehend the whole scope and all the dis- 
criminations of his thoughts, which neither fell into 
pantheism on the one side, nor into any vague mys- 
ticism on the other, while avoiding materialism and 
arbitrariness altogether. 

For the next three or four years Dr. Channing con- 
tinued to see a great deal of the " new lights " of New 
Bedford, and became very much interested in them; 
and in what they called their " walk in love." 

In 1828 I happened to move into the neighbor- 
hood of a lady and gentleman who had been among 
those emancipated by Mary Newhall from that caput 
mortuum of the old Quakerism, which for half a cen- 
tury had prevailed in New England, and they told 
me all about her ministry, and showed me her letters 
to them on " Spiritual Principles;" also a series of 
letters from Mary Rotch of New Bedford, giving an 
account of the discussions "in Meeting," and the 
changes that had taken place in the Quaker Societies 
of New Bedford and Philadelphia, consequent on 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



311 



Mary Newhall's visits and preaching in the Unita- 
rian meeting-house of New Bedford, where the excom- 
municated " new lights " were hospitably taken in. I 
took all these letters to read to Dr. Channing, who 
listened with an eager interest, which few printed 
books awakened in him, to these reports of the 
mysteries of the moral and spiritual life, warm from 
the fresh heart of human nature. 

In the next summer Mrs. Newhall came to Boston 
from Albany, where her husband had taken his fam- 
ily and business in hope to escape the persecution 
to which they were subjected in Lynn. I was at 
** once so impressed with her as a brilliant and free 
intellect as well as spiritual seer, that during the 
month she stayed in Boston I saw and conversed 
with her every hour that I could snatch from my 
school, and wrote to Dr. Channing of our conversa- 
tions. He answered at once, begging me to continue 
to write, and saying that he should come to Boston as 
soon as he was out of his sick chamber ; but he did 
did not arrive till the clay after she had gone. She 
had lately read everything of his that she could pro- 
cure, and was kindled to delight with his sermons 
at the ordinations of Mr. Farley and of Mr. Motte, 
preached the year before. They seemed to her as 
truly inspired with God's revelation of himself as 
the books of the New Testament, and to justify the 
faith in and to which she had given her testimony. 

There was nothing of the fanatic in Mary Newhall. 
While she believed God spoke to every individual, she 
believed in no individual supremacy, and thought 
Jesus himself disclaimed it ; and, by disclaiming it 



312 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

most completely, was exalted to unity with the Uni- 
versal Father. I never knew Dr. Channing to express 
so much pleasure in the recognition of his views by 
any other person as he did in Mary Xewhall's ; and 
precisely because he knew no other mind of compar- 
able power to hers, which at the same time was so 
little indebted to other human minds. She had been 
brought up in Hanover, Massachusetts, at a time when 
all human literature was shut off from the Quakers by 
their misunderstood tradition. George Fox's " Jour- 
nal," William Penn's Tracts, " Pilgrim's Progress," and 
a volume of Madame Guyon's "Spiritual Letters" 
literally constituted her whole library, outside of „ 
the Bible ; and the whole story of the manner in 
which she had met her excommunication from the 
Quaker Church testified to him of the purity of heart 
which " sees God." 

I wish I had space to give more fully all that both 
of them said at this time, and what I learned of the 
depth and breadth of Dr. Channing's (and I may add 
of Christ's) religion. Of one thing I believe I could 
then convince this generation; namely, that it has 
not " outgrown " (as the cant phrase is), but perhaps 
fallen below, the Christianity which Dr. Channing 
believed ; for it was a spirit, not a form of thought. 
And I should think this would be plain to any reader 
of his two above-mentioned sermons. 1 The very re- 
markable article on Fenelon, printed in the first vol- 
ume of his Works, was written about this time ; and 
nothing that he has left to us shows more clearly how 
entirely free he was from asceticism, and how clearly 

1 See vol. iii. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



313 



he discriminated the humility and spirit of the mar- 
tyrdom of Christ from the exaggerations of the ex- 
treme self-analysis which creates what he used to 
call " spiritual dyspepsia/' which in the end destroys 
all rational self-knowledge. 

And here I think is the best place to introduce one 
of Dr. Channing's letters to me, written when I had 
a case of practical duty to decide upon, where there 
was only a choice between evils. It brought me into 
antagonism with several unprincipled people who 
had the power to injure me and my family by unscru- 
pulous misrepresentations of my actions and motives, 
which I could not explain to everybody. The thing 
to be done was to baffle a conspiracy against the 
property . and happiness of some young girls who were 
my pupils, and had no natural protectors related to 
them but one who was party to the wrong; but it 
was in my power to save them, because I could make 
a revelation to their legal guardian of the past action 
and character of those for whose pecuniary interest 
the conspiracy was devised. I consulted with Dr. 
Channing, who on the whole approved of the course 
I decided to take ; but from something he said about 
my not neglecting my own "to do other people's 
duties," and not " being driven by my feelings to 
expose myself needlessly to uncharitable censure," 
I thought he blamed me for mixing myself up in a 
matter that to some did not seem immediately to 
concern me. ' Therefore I wrote to him, telling him 
that here was a case in which no one else could do 
any good ; and though I did not wish to be Quixotic 
in benevolence, my heart counselled the possible sac- 



314 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 

rifice of my reputation for prudence, for the sake of 
the end that was gained, 

Newport, July 3, 1830. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I received your letter with 
great pleasure. It was quite a relief to me ; for I had 
many fears, before leaving Boston, lest I had done harm 
by my remarks on your late difficulty. You were evi- 
dently disheartened and disturbed. Your letter shows that 
the elastic spirit has risen again, and that you have come 
from the trial with no loss of resolution, and I trust with 
no loss of happiness. The thought of having given you 
pain, and still more of having discouraged you when you 
looked to me for strength, is a burden which I rejoice to 
throw off. Such failures sometimes tempt me to resolve 
on declining wholly the office of counsellor. But this 
would be doing wrong ; for I fail undoubtedly as much 
from errors in myself, which I may reform, as from the 
refractoriness of the materials on which I operate ; and my 
disappointments ought to urge me to more resolute self- 
improvement. You seem to fear that it may not be quite 
" proper " in you to let me know that my prudence is no 
better shield from the world's censure than your impru- 
dence. On this point, however, I have no such sensitive- 
ness as to prevent my friends from speaking plainly to me, 
and I am pleased that you have taken courage to let me 
know how I am judged by that tribunal of society before 
w r hich we all stand. You must not think, however, that 
you have disclosed any great or startling secret to me ; you 
think that you "small 'people" alone know what the world 
thinks of you. I believe the world speaks its mind to 
" great" and " small," though in different ways or lan- 
guages, and the former must take more pains to hear 
and understand. I think it too of great use to know 



REMINISCENCES OF DK. CHANNING. 315 



what the world thinks of us, if we have force enough to 
escape discouragement (that greatest of evils), force enough 
to hold fast our trust in our capacity of progress, and to 
avail ourselves calmly of censure as a means of improve- 
ment. Unhappily some are discouraged, some irritated, 
some hardened, some made misanthropists, by the world's 
unsparing judgments ; and to such, ignorance, if not bliss, 
is at least security from much evil. But to such of us as 
have no great partiality to our present selves, but value 
ourselves . chiefly on having within us the seed of some- 
thing better, it is good to learn how others view us ; for 
in some respects, at least, we are more faithfully reflected 
in the glass of other minds than we appear to our own 
unaided consciousness. However stern be the reprover 
within us, it cannot do all our work for us, because it 
views us only from one position ; and its deficiencies are 
made up by those who see us from very different ones. 
I know indeed that it is sometimes a sore trial to have 
the accusations of conscience followed up by condemning 
voices, or looks, or manners from without;' and sometimes 
we seem to have no refuge from self-contempt and de- 
spair but in scorn and defiance of others. Blessed are 
they — and such there are — who endure this temptation ! 
who hope for and resolve on progress under inward and 
outward rebuke ! and who protect, with sleepless care, the 
spirit of love and humanity against its worst foes, — the 
cruel judgments of others ! 

I have written almost immediately on receiving your 
letter, because I wish to repair any injury I may have 
done your mind, and to assure you of my joy in your reso- 
lute and cheerful tone. Be of good courage ! You have 
done much for yourself, and have learned something of 
that " good " which' is cheaply bought by a life of humilia- 
tion and pain. I shall be happy to hear from you, but 



316 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



having now disburdened my conscience, I cannot promise 
to write again very soon. 

Your sincere friend, 

Wm. E. Channing. 

Late in the fall of 1830, Dr. Channing went to the 
West Indies for the benefit of the health of his wife, 
who was in all the years I knew her a martyr to an 
acute chronic rheumatism, whose unceasing pain her 
heroic affection for him made her succeed in conceal- 
ing in a great degree. 

Just before he went away, his sympathies were 
again excited by a domestic tragedy that took place 
in a circle of superior people in whom I also felt a 
reverent interest. The only possible amelioration of 
the calamity was in the reform of the criminals, w 7 ith 
the wife of one of whom I was in deepest religious 
sympathy ; and she was not unwilling that Dr. Chan- 
ning should know and give counsel on the details 
of the work of purification. This is saying enough 
to explain the following letter : — 

St. Croix, January 29, 1831. 

My Dear Miss Peabody, — I thank you for your letter. 
It was very gratifying to me. It did not, however, relieve 
me from all the concern which I felt about you on leaving 
Boston. I dare not arrest you in your efforts to minister to 
a fallen, broken spirit, and I ought to say that my affec- 
tion and respect for 3^011 have been heightened — greatly 
heightened — by what I have known of your views, feel- 
ings, and exertions in that sad affair. 

But whether you are equal to this ministry I am not 



f 

REMINISCENCES OF DK. CHANNING. 



317 



sure. I fear it is too absorbing. I fear that this train of 
burning thoughts may fill your mind too exclusively ; that 
you may not be able to look round on the beings nearest 
you, and on your common duties, with a calm, clear judg- 
ment, and to perform efficiently your daily task. It is 
possible that the balance of the mind may be destroyed by 
a sympathy, which, viewed in itself, or simply in . refer- 
ence to the calamity which excites it, may not seem exces- 
sive, but which really interferes' with a due sensibility to 
other claims. I beg you to watch over the health of your 
own soul. This is peculiarly your own care ; nor are you 
to forget it in ministering to others. In truth, you cannot 
minister effectively without a calm, wise mind, conscien- 
tiously faithful to the will of God as expressed in all your 
relations. Forgive me, if I am too fearful. I should dis- 
trust myself in your situation. 

Your accounts of your fallen and suffering friend give 
me hope. I see ground of hope in the agony of his re- 
morse ; not that there is any virtue in this, but it shows 
that the moral life is not extinguished, and it is the nec- 
essary condition and spring of moral effort. That a 
man whose crimes have drawn down such signal punish- 
ment, who is an outcast from society, exiled from home, 
with honor lost, hope blighted, and every wordly inter- 
est wrecked, should suffer even to agony seems almost 
inevitable ; and what is so inevitable is not virtue. It 
seems, however, that he is more than a sufferer ; that he 
accepts his punishment willingly ; that he uses with him- 
self no arts or palliations for softening it, but asks only 
for purity, be the purifying furnace ever so severe. Here 
is moral action, and, I will hope, a sincere self-surrender 
to the will of God. 

You are right in your anxiety to direct him to God as his 
only hope of purity and peace. In truth, we have, all of 



313 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNINGr. 



us, no other. Severed from that rock, we are all lost, and 

equally lost, whether we escape or fall into excesses of guilt. 
We can find no pledge of perfect virtue and of everlasting 
progress but in God's Infinity and Love ; ' and the soul 
wants its true life, wants the necessary condition of spir- 
itual victory, until it has raised itself to this good. Happy 
your friend, if he has learned that there is a Power which 
can triumph over all evil within him, and an immeasu- 
rable Love which will rejoice in the triumph ! 

But I hope the benefit of these views will not be lost to 
him by mystical views of religion. Here, I fear, has been 
one of his perils and stumbling-blocks. You" know the 
enthusiastic tendency of some of his friends ; and though 
I have seen it in them without much fear, knowing as I 
do the strength of their moral principles and their sound 
judgment, yet in him it would not be .safe. He wants re- 
ligion in a plain, tangible, substantial form. In looking 
to God for purity he must remember that this is a moral 
good, requiring from its very nature our own efforts, stri- 
vings, and watch ings, vigorous self-knowledge, self-con- 
flict, and habitual practical fidelity to all our duties, how- 
ever made known to us. We do not truly understand 
the infinite love of God until we learn from it the infinity 
of the soul which he has made in his own image, and 
hope and strive to unfold it and assimilate it more and 
more to its original. The idea of maintaining a passive 
frame, in which God is to communicate his spirit to us, 
seems to me wholly at war with our active moral nature. 
Xor do I approve more of the idea that we 'are to wait for 
God to speak in our hearts, and are to reject all other 
modes of teaching. God has infinite modes of speaking, 
and why do we restrain him ] His voice must be rever- 
ently heard, come whence it may. There is something 
superstitious in attaching exclusive importance to any mode 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 319 



of revelation. Virtue lies in obeying God's will, not in 
learning it in a particular way. It lies in discerning, 
loving, and striving after perfect goodness, whether this 
be manifested in the precepts and spotless character of 
Jesus, or the idea of it spring up in our own minds. 

You will understand the bearing of these remarks. That 
the convictions of personal responsibility may be lost by 
religious mysticism I too much fear. I would have every 
obstruction removed from the path of the wanderer, who 
would return to God. I may have written what is not 
needed. At least it will prove my interest in what lies so 
near your heart. 

Had I time, I would notice at some length the conclu- 
sion of your letter. I am sorry that you should need any 
extraordinary courage to speak to me with great simplicity, 
whether present or absent. I wonder that with all your 
sagacity you have not learned that reserve springs more 
frequently from self-distrust than from distrust of others. 
Were human hearts laid open to you, you might find 
in some who seem to you severe judges of others far 
severer judges of themselves; deeply conscious of defect, 
distrustful of their own judgment, dissatisfied with their 
efforts for others; fearful of misleading, not daring to 
give themselves up to impulse and spontaneous sugges- 
tions from having been so often betrayed into extrava- 
gances of thought and feeling. Such persons are the last 
to whom you should fear to speak plainly. They can bear 
reproof patiently - because so accustomed to self-reproof, 
and are schooled by consciousness of infirmity to bear the 
infirmities of their fellow-beings. But enough. 

You have heard, of course, that we are agreeably es- 
tablished on this beautiful island, and in this delicious 
climate. Mrs. Channing is much improved, and is as happy 
as she well can be in a foreign land. There is no danger, 



320 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



however, of our forgetting our home. The ocean, always 
so clear to us, we look upon with new pleasure as our path 
to those whom we have left. We all remember you and 
yours with affection. On the voyage, on some of our still 
nights, I again and again wanted to hear some of the 
spirit-tones of your sister Mary. Her music, she may see, 
was not thrown awa^ on me. 

And now, farewell ! May He in whom we live fit and 
strengthen you for your work, and give you a calm trust 
in Himself I 

Your sincere friend, 

Wm. E. Channing. 

While Dr. Channing was in St. Croix, my relations 
with a lovely and beloved pupil who was by relation- 
ship connected with some of the disciples (if I may 
so call them) of Bulwer, and who were making 
" Henry Pelham " their model, incidentally brought 
me into intimate knowledge of the corruption of the 
imagination and life of some gifted young men of 
Boston. It was a frightful, revelation to me to see 
crime committed, not by the access of terrible pas- 
sion, but in mere frivolity and absence of all serious 
purpose. The case was worse than that of Henry 
Pelham, whose conscience of citizenship lifted him at 
the last out of purely egotistical profligacy. 

In the distress of my mind at this revelation of 
evil in the midst of our American life (the other 
chief criminal had been a foreigner), I wrote to Dr. 
Channing a letter to which I received the following 
reply:— . 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 321 



St. Croix, March 11, 1831. 

My Dear Miss Peabody, — I have just received your 
letter of February 1. I thank you for it. Painful as 
the disclosures are, I wish to receive them. I fear, how- 
ever, for you. I fear that your mind is acting too exclu- 
sively and intensely on a few subjects. I trust, too, that 
your deep impressions of the guilt of a part of our com- 
munity are to be ascribed, in a measure, to your position, 
your recent solitude, and your recent disappointments in 
what you thought tried virtue. 

My own inquiries have led me to somewhat different 
results. That as deep depravity exists now as in the worst 
times I doubt not ; but that there is a deeper and wider 
action of pure and noble principles I also incline to be- 
lieve ; and I suspect that vice will never run to greater 
excess than when it is an exception, or when it resists and 
triumphs over the prevalent sentiment of the community 
on the side of virtue. Still there is a terrible strength of 
moral evil in the world, and this I would see and feel as I 
have not yet felt. Only let me not despair; let me never 
forget that the Infinite Power is on the side of truth and 
holiness ; that there is an infinite fountain of moral energy . 
and disinterested love. I would feel that what we call the 
deepest vice is yet superficial compared with the principle 
of virtue and spiritual growth within us. I care not how 
faithfully and terribly human passions and crimes are por- 
trayed to me ; I want no deception, — I can bear the worst. 
But I desire to hear no language of despondency, not a 
moment's doubt of the triumph of virtue. 

One of the great ends of peculiar guilt is to call forth 
peculiar virtue. You have seen this in your suffering 
friends. I wish it might be seen still more in the increased 
energy with which we, who are horror-struck by crime, 
strive to subdue it even in its victims as well as to prevent 

21 



322 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



its spread. Let us, however, fulfil this part of our duty 
calmly, and feel that we are resisting vice, not only by acts 
of direct opposition, but still more, perhaps, by a consis- 
tent, steady testimony to virtue in our common life. Who 
ever knew the depth of human crime like Jesus 1 But 
within him was a power of goodness which he felt was to 
prevail over evil ; and the existence of that power in any 
degree in ourselves is a pledge and prediction of the same 
result. Do not let me hear of your " nature fainting," etc. 
Tell me, however, your real feelings ; this I do not mean to 
interdict. You can hardly gratify or serve me inore than 
by setting before me society just as it is, and nothing 
which I write must check the freedom of your coinmu- 
.nications. 

I am glad you are writing, not merely because this will 
keep you out of harm, or give an innocent direction to 
your mind, but because you have thoughts worthy to be 
communicated ; and because your own mind will work 
itself into clearer views by the effort of . communication. 
Ypu want, however^ a counsellor and friend. You are 
apt to prejudice the truth by placing it in unhappy con- 
nections. For example, in your remarks on the first 
chapters of Genesis you threw a doubtfulness over some 
great truths by supposing them to be taught, or veiled, in 
the narrative which has nothing to do with them. I saw 
then one of your intellectual dangers. You are led astray 
by slight connections and analogies, and are apt to see in 
past or present facts what other eyes cannot discover. I 
have thought, too, that your interpretations of life are not 
always to be trusted, and that you are in danger of substi- 
tuting your own structures for reality. I would not trouble 
you with these remarks, did I not think that you have still 
a gifted eye, which looks far into the hidden wisdom of God. 

You speak of Dr. Follen's lectures, but not in a manner 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 323 



which enables me to judge how they have been received. 
My great interest in him has given me some solicitude as 
to this experiment ; that he should not be popular would 
not surprise me, for even in what we call our cultivated 
community how few have looked into themselves ! But I 
want him to receive so many suffrages among the wisest 
as will secure him influence in our community. 

Your extract from J)r. Kirkland's letter 1 was very cheer- 
ing to me. The last year of my life has been so unpro- 
ductive, the body has so continually refused its aid to the 
mind, that I need some encouragement of this kind that 
I may yet do better. 

Do remember me affectionately to your family. We 
are all doing as well perhaps as we could have expected. 
Mrs. Channing is much improved, but her present gain is 
slow. We are beginning to .cast our eyes homeward, but 
we are not impatient. We hear good accounts from home, 
and, as we never expect to look again on the face of tropi- 
cal Nature or breathe its air, we are willing to stay a little 
longer. 

Yours, very affectionately, 

Wm. E. Channing. 

1 Dr. Kirkland was travelling in Europe at this time, and in a 
letter to me, written from Ireland, he spoke of a liberal religious 
movement he found in the north of Ireland, where were scattered 
about leaflets of three or four pages, which were extracts from Dr. 
Channing' s printed sermons and articles published by him in the 
" Christian Examiner." He said, " Not only the Unitarians of 
Great Britain and Ireland think everything of Dr. Channing's 
writings, but even members of the Establishment, Oxonians, etc. 
have spoken to me with enthusiasm of his productions. Give my 
love to Dr. Channing, and tell him this." 



CHAPTER XX. 



IN looking back over what I have written, I feel 
that I may give the impression of an excessive 
moral excitement in Dr. Channing, which would do 
injustice to the serene spirituality of his faith in a 
very present Father of all, sending down the bless- 
ings of rain and sunshine alike "on the just and un- 
just." Certainly he w T as thoroughly alive to all the 
moral tragedy of private and public life ; but besides 
this he had the vision of Genius, and God was to him 
not only moral Governor and loving Father, but the 
Eternal Beauty. 

I could make this more obvious, if my single volume 
would give me space to copy out the whole month's 
journal of my visit to Newport in 1827 ; and also 
the journal of another visit that I made to him there 
in 1836. For Dr. Channing at play was an exhibi- 
tion of practical Christianity, as edifying perhaps as 
(and more rare than) Dr. Channing in the pulpit 
But neither can be fully conceived through the cold 
medium of printed words, — even his own ! To ap 
preciate this more private aspect of his character, it 
was necessary to live in the same house with him 
•An occasional call upon him, when there would 
generally be some dominating motive of the visitor 
determining the conversation, did not give full oppor- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



325 



tunity for spontaneous expression, careless of possible 
consequences in the minds of others. But at New- 
port he was in the bosom of a reverent family love 
which interpreted him with unsuspecting and all- 
believing generosity, — the only atmosphere com- 
pletely adequate to the needs of the heart, enabling 
it to abandon itself to its impulses. That so few 
homes have this atmosphere is doubtlesss because, 
by reason of their shortcomings, so few are able to 
create them. 

Yet the conditions of the Newport home did not 
seem at first sight to be exceptionally favorable. 
There were really three families in it, when, according 
to the proverb, one house can well contain only one. 
The domestic service was done by a family of six, 
who were completely independent in the kitchen, with 
their own purse and table ; yet Mrs. Channing said, 
that, in the several years since the arrangement had 
been made, she had heard no fretful word, nor known 
any difficulty between the families. Then Miss Gibbs, 
who owned the farm and took the lead, was so su- 
perstitious an Episcopalian that she never allowed 
herself to go into the church of her beloved Congrega- 
tionalist brother ; and this anywhere else would have 
been a discordant element. 

I thought one secret of the unwonted domestic 
peace was the absence of all hurry; the deliberate 
gentleness of their manners precluding the usual 
misunderstandings of the impulsive. Instead of 
command and obedience, there was suggestion and 
happy acquiescence. Then, though Miss Gibbs could 
conceive of no church without a hierarchy and a 



326 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



liturgy to regulate the devotions, yet that she con- 
sidered Dr. Channing a light and guide in questions 
of social right and wrong I had several opportunities 
to observe. 

One Saturday afternoon, when the skies looked 
a little doubtful whether to rain or shine, she had 
called in some extra workmen to gather in the hay, 
who, not content with the nice coffee she provided for 
her own farm servants, " struck " for rum. Coming 
to Dr. Channing she asked, — 

" What should you do, William, if the hay were 
yours ? " 

" I think T should hold out, Sarah." 

" But they will be employed elsewhere, and get 
their rum at all events ; and if it should rain before 
Monday, I shall lose the crop entirely." 

"We can seldom carry out a principle, you know," 
he replied, " without risking any private interest. 
Then it may be that the neighbors, seeing that you 
do risk this loss, will believe that your refusing the 
rum is not parsimony, but a true regard for the men, 
and this will lead them to think of their own duty 
seriously ; and the men themselves, if not now, yet 
in some hour of reflection hereafter, may see that 
your Christian care for their best good was sincere, 
since you would suffer loss rather than imperil it 
But the hay is yours, not mine ; and it is for you, not 
me, to weigh the costs and decide the matter." 

Miss Gibbs stood wistfully eying him as he spoke, 
and then slowly left the room. She sent the new- 
comers away, and did lose more than half the crop 
of hay, but did not seem to repent her decision. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 327 

Dr. Channing rose very early, as indeed he did 
even in winter ; aind after his bath went out at once 
into the garden, — as the whole Gibbs farm was 
called; for the house was surrounded with a very 
large garden full of flowers, flowering trees and shrubs, 
and birds that never were startled by a gun. At 
seven o'clock he came in to the breakfast table all 
redolent of the divine communion with the morning 
glory. One cup of black tea and one slice of brown 
toast was all that his stomach could bear for breakfast, 
— the life-long penalty he paid for an attempt to live 
on too little food when he first became a student of di- 
vinity, and thought thus to save the necessity of bod- 
ily exercise, and so redeem time for study. The effect 
was a contraction of the stomach, which is an incur- 
able disease. He said, when telling me this, " I 
learned by this natural penalty the sacredness of the 
laws of the physical system ; that they too are the 
laws of God. Not being able to eat enough to support 
a man's body, I am unable to use my mind at all, ex- 
cept for a small portion of the day. Of course there 
is compensation. The infinite love of God makes 
the retributive as well as the generative action of 
his laws a blessing, by leading us to recognize their 
righteousness. Does not Milton teach this lesson, 
when he puts into the mouth of the tender Son of 
God and elder brother of man the curse, which is 
really only the blessing of life offered again in spirit- 
ual form ? Every symbol of Milton is loaded with 
meaning. Adam, who represents the reflective mind, 
explains to Eve, who represents the heart of sensibil- 
ity, that the way to salvation is still open ; and that 



328 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

they must adore the large mercy involved in their pun- 
ishment for having abused, the gift of Paradise." 

After breakfast, if Dr. Channing did not go to ride 
on horseback, he would go out in the garden again 
with the children, looking into the birds' -nests, and at 
the progress made by every flower, w T hile enjoying the 
sunshine and perfumed air till ten o'clock; when, as I 
have told in a former chapter, he summoned the whole 
household into the parlor to the social devotions, 
which seemed to be a perfect tuning, for the music 
of the day, of the thousand stringed harps of the 
domestic orchestra. After this he would go into his 
chamber, where he had a writing desk, and sometimes 
write for an hour. But he seemed to have secret in- 
timations of all that passed in the skies, for wherever 
the rest of the family were, they were liable to be 
summoned at any moment to look at some beautiful 
effect of light, some picturesque cloud or other pass- 
ing beauty of Xature. He seemed to regard all the 
summer-time as a truly religious festival, whose rites 
were joy and beauty perceived, and sympathy with 
innocent animal life. He often drove in the after- 
noons for exercise in a rough wagon, sometimes in a 
chaise, taking one of us with him, — when he seemed 
to observe and would point out every beauty of the 
landscape of the lovely island shores. When the 
tide served, we all took our bathing bombasets, and 
went to the beach ; and in a long band, holding each 
other by the hand, the strong negro servant at one 
end, to be on hand for accidents, we would walk down 
to meet the surf, and let it roll over us, — a sport 
most exhilarating to Dr. Channing. When the weather 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 329 



did not favor excursions of any kind, we read " Per- 
sian Sketches," "Haja Baba," and other pleasant 
books ; or easy conversation, to which the children 
were always party, 

" Made sunshine in the shady place." 

In the drives I had with Dr. Channing he some- 
times went into the city of Newport, and showed me 
the haunts of his youth. One day we called on a 
lady who pressed on us some rich cake ; telling me I 
could only get such in Newport. " Ah, Mrs. Clarke," 
said he, " its rich oake has been the ruin of Newport !" 
And when we came out, he said : " The first concep- 
tion of glory I had in my childhood was attached to 
the person of an old negro man-cook, belonging to my 
Uncle Gibbs's household, who was always in demand 
when anybody had a great dinner-party. Cookery 
seemed to be regarded as the most serious and highest 
of arts. And certainly it is a most important art, 
if its ideal be the health of the physical system 
instead of an excess of physical pleasure, to which 
mental and moral pleasure is sacrificed. The uni- 
versal disease of the human race is a sufficient proof 
that we have not yet discovered (you would perhaps 
say have lost) ( knowledge of the laws of God with 
respect to the body. To lose consciousness of these 
was perhaps the beginning of sin. Its first effect 
was to spoil the pure mind of its original holy 
instincts, and dim its powers of sense-perception. 
The last triumph of Christianity may be the discov- 
ery of a perfect hygiene. I have thought it proph- 
esied, perhaps, in Jesus Christ's miracles of healing, 
which are not violations but fulfilments of Nature's 



330 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



laws. There is great suggestion in the words he 
always used when he healed disease, — ' Thy sins are 
forgiven thee.' I think the simple pleasures of taste 
and smell not unworthy of a place in heaven ; they 
are keenest in innocent childhood, and I believe 
that the wisely temperate enjoy them more than the 
Sybarite. Always the tender Father of men offers 
Paradise to his child first; and Paradise may be 
regained on earth, if experience will humbly and 
faithfully use the consequences of the loss of inno- 
cence, — not fully to be regained by one individual 
or one generation, but at last by the social whole. 
Has not God created man in generations, that evil 
may not become inveterate, but have a chance to die 
out ? Moses limits the necessary consequences of 
transgression to three or four generations. Experi- 
ence will depress and degrade us, unless hope go hand 
in hand with it. Hope is the imaginative act of love, 
which alone is creative of moral and spiritual power. 
Christianity, I believe," he would frequently say, " will 
one day banish* disease from the earth. But well as I 
know by experience the sad result of violated physi- 
cal law, it does not shut out from me the truth of the 
infinite blessing of life ; and I believe I now enjoy, 
at least for moments on a beautiful day, the bliss of 
Paradise ! Of nothing am I more sure than that we 
are created for every species of enjoyment, physical as 
well as intellectual, moral, and the divine spiritual." 

Thus often in his private conversation he expressed 
the same ideas that make the revelation of his article 
on Fenelon ; 1 where he shows that self-crucifixion has 
1 See vol. i. of his Works. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 331 

its reasonable limits, and describes the life of the eter- 
nal peace in which man is in the ascension — beyond 
the clouds — sometimes even before his death. 

It was on these drives that Dr. Channing spoke 
to me of his own personal experiences in his child- 
hood, and while growing up. He also talked to me a 
great deal about Ehode Island, whose government he 
thought allowed exceptional freedom to individual 
development of character. Among many singular 
characters that he described were some professed 
atheists ; one was a great physician, and one a man who 
used to abandon himself to -the impulse to sport like 
various animals, " in order," as he said, to " experience 
Nature in all her forms." He seemed half amused and 
half saddened by the vagaries he described. But he 
always maintained that Eoger Williams was right in 
giving free scope to religious speculation, unhindered 
by civil laws. If there was more open neglect and 
denial of religion in Ehode Island than elsewhere, 
there was on the other hand less hypocrisy and empty 
formality. The need of religion was more obvious 
therefore ; and what existed had more earnestness 
than that in some other places, where there was quite 
as little but more profession of it. 

He showed me some of the early haunts of Wash- 
ington Allston, who came to Newport to school from 
South Carolina when a boy ; and told me the curious 
fact that he stayed within doors to paint, rather than 
— like himself — roamed about in the beautiful sce- 
nery. One of Allston's first artistic attempts was a 
picture of the storming of Toulon by Bonaparte, where 
he prudently made all the assailants turn their backs ! 



332 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



He said the boys looked at this representation with a 
wondering respect, and held Allston in great reverence. 

Washington Allston married for his first wife a sis- 
ter of Dr. Charming, who went abroad with him and 
died in London ; and twenty years after he married 
a cousin of Dr. Channing, — the sister of Eichard IJ. 
Dana, with whom he was very intimate from the time 
he returned from Europe. The reverence Allston in- 
spired as a boy, Dr. Channing always retained for 
him ; and every picture Allston brought out was an 
event to him." It was his habit to go to bed at nine 
o'clock ; but Allston never made visits till after ten, 
and it was a rule of Dr. Channing's that he should be 
called up whenever Allston came ; and he would sit 
up with him till one or two o'clock in the morning ! 
One of Allston's greatest pictures — Jeremiah in his 
cell with the Spirit of the Lord upon him just before 
he spoke — hung on the walls of Miss Gibbs's dining- 
room in Boston. (It now has a more appropriate place 
in the gallery of Yale College.) One day I told Dr. 
Channing that it seemed to me quite an inappropriate 
adornment of a dining-room. I had seen it first, and 
been profoundly impressed by it, when it was exhib- 
ited in Boylston Hall alone, in 1822, and the artist 
had skilfully placed it at a due distance from the 
eye. Dr. Channing said : — 

" Yet Allston painted it for this place. Mrs. Gibbs 
said to him one day that she would give him 81,000 
to paint a picture to hang between those two win- 
dows ; and he painted this one. After her death, an 
English gentleman, who was here to dine, heard of 
the price given for it from one of us, and said to Miss 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



333 



Gibbs that he would give her $2,000 for it. She 
found she could not part with it for that sum, and im- 
mediately sent to Allston another $1,000-, telling him 
' how she had found out that he should not have sold 
it for less." 

After tea we would sit and talk sometimes in the 
portico, sometimes in the parlor, except when Dr. 
Channing called us out of doors to look at the stars 
or moon. I forgot to say that at sunset all the family 
regularly went out to look at the western sky from a 
particular spot in the garden, for it could not be seen 
from the embowered house. I think I never saw so 
strongly expressed as in that house, except lately in 
the novels of George Macdonald, that Nature is all 
the time to be regarded with religious sacredness, as 
F the garment God is weaving at the roaring loom of 
time for man to see Him by." 

The little visitor to Mary, that I mentioned in my 
second chapter, was not only my week-day scholar in 
Boston, but in my Sunday-school class. The next 
winter I one day asked each of the class to think and 
tell me what they would like Heaven to be. One of 
them frankly confessed, "Good things to eat and 
drink." Another said, " Piles and piles of books." 
Another, " Thousands and thousands of flowers." But 
this one came up to me, and whispered in my ear, 
" Newport, and all the folks." 

This child was a chronic dyspeptic, and felt the 
moral burden of the fractious and peevish temper in- 
cident to her diseased stomach. Dr. Channing tried 
to comfort her conscience by pointing out this physi- 
cal cause ; but he told her if, every day, she would 



334 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

take some valerian tea, it might soothe the irritated 
nerves. And the child heroically took the nauseous 
dose, day after day, in the hope of attaining to the 
lovely temper of the family. I heard Dr. Channing 
point this out one day to his little son as " a sign of 
the spirit that made saints and martyrs/' for he too 
— poor child ! — was, during all his infancy, the vic- 
tim of dyspepsia. 

I would like to enlarge more on Dr. Channing's 
bearing as husband and father; but it would require 
some details not proper for publication at present, so 
I omit what would be very instructive to many a 
parent. 

Only one thing more of the Newport life can I speak 
of within the < prescribed limits of this volume. On 
Sundays we used to go in the afternoons to a little 
meeting-house, built on a hill within a mile of the 
" Garden." There was but one other meeting-house 
outside Newport on the island, and that was Quaker. 
Several years before, Dr. Channing had helped the 
people to build this one, which was open to any apos- 
tle of any sect who felt a call to preach in it. Dr. 
Channing did so whenever able, while he was at the 
island ; and with such acceptance to the people, that, 
as soon as he came to Newport each year, they would 
get together and vote that the meeting-house should 
be open only to him while he continued at the " Gar- 
den." He said that at first they were so unused to 
going to meeting they could not sit still long, but 
would get up in the midst of his sermon and go out 
and walk round the house ! But now they had be- 
come a very attentive audience. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 335 

His preaching was extempore, and so interesting that 
people from Newport city, and from Tiverton, would 
come to hear it. I saw, when I was in England in 
1872, a volume of Kingsley's sermons, entitled "Good 
News of God/' preached to his country parish. These 
sermons, in their unconventional tone and benignant 
views of the Heavenly Father, brought back to me a 
forcible remembrance of Dr. Channing's simple ad- 
dresses to his neighbors. 

I cannot remember whether it was in my first or 
second visit I found that Miss Dix (who taught Dr. 
Channing's children in summer) had organized a Sun- 
day-school for the mornings, in which Dr. Channing 
took a class of adults, to whom he read from the Gos- 
pel narratives with marked effect, whenever he was 
well enough. I heard him read the story of the wid- 
ow's mite, and converse with the men upon it ; also, 
of the commission given to the apostles, after the 
Eesurrection, to " feed my lambs." His aim seemed 
to be to make the men feel that they could so do their 
daily duties to their children and neighbors as to be 
effective apostles of Christ, even in their humble 
sphere ; for the disciples were not learned men, but 
plain laborers like themselves; and even Jesus him- 
self was a carpenter's son, who had undoubtedly 
worked at the trade till the law of his country, every 
tittle of which he obeyed, gave him liberty to prophesy; 
for in that country the children followed the trade of 
their father, and any man might become one of the 
Lord's prophets who felt an inward -call, when he was 
thirty years old. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



ECREATION was no less the plan for the even- 



V ings in which I read to Dr. Channing in Bos- 
ton in the winter, than of the summers in Newport, 
with the exception of the single evening in the week 
when the conversation-party took place, out of which, 
soon after Dr. Tuckerman joined it, all we ladies 
dropped. In order to have a chance of sleep, and the 
requisite strength for his official duties, Dr. Channing 
endeavored to forget them in the .evening. Light 
literature and easy social talk, in which he could 
flutter the seraph wings of the child-soul, born again 
in his later years, was the rule ; though he never 
could be sure of not being interrupted by callers, 
with special quests more or less serious, which, how- 
ever, served at least to make variety. 

It is true that the current novels and magazine 
articles were seldom quite free from tragic associa-. 
tions with that great " body of death " which eighteen 
hundred years of Christianity have not yet entirely 
quickened. This was the case especially with the 
novels of Bulwer, then coming out, which he often 
found even distressing. And it took us a whole win- 
ter to read through " Wilhelm Meister," though he 
did not regard that as even intended to be a realistic 
picture of human life, but a merely symbolical work, 




REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



337 



and appreciated its artistic merit and meaning. But 
he would often say, " That is enough for to-night ; 
let us have something a little more enlivening," — 
and would turn to Miss Mitford's sketches, or some- 
thing else as light and beautiful. 

In the ever-debated comparison between Goethe 
and Schiller, his heart of humanity put him on the 
side of Schiller. He said the greatest lesson that 
Goethe taught the human race was the insufficiency 
of genius, without the sovereign moral sense, to read 
aright the Sphinx riddle. On my saying once, " Is 
not Goethe Wordsworth's 'intellectual all in all,' 
who ' would peep and botanize upon his mothers 
grave ' ? " he said : " I think his want of depth of heart 
was not necessary ; for his natural temperament was 
extraordinarily tender. It came from his lack of the 
moral .power. He was not capable of truth to woman, 
because he did not conceive the essential divinity of 
human nature. The moral power can only become 
sovereign through a consciousness of the filial relations 
of the Eternal Soul, which men and women equally 
share. Nowhere does Goethe betray his utter igno- 
rance of the Christian religion more than in the 
nonchalant way in which he presents to us the 'Con- 
fessions of a Fair Saint,' which was not of his compo- 
sition, but the journal of a real person." 

Again, he said : " Goethe never seems to have expe- j 
rienced happiness. Amusement was his highest con- 
ception of life, — dignified and elegant amusement, 
certainly : an artist is never a mere trifler. But he 
was a stranger alike to the heroic nobleness of pa- 
triotism and to the rapture of a pure, self-forgetting 

22 



338 REMINISCENCES OF DE. CHANGING. 



love. I see nothing sublime in his going upon the 
field of battle to observe his sensations in the cannon 
fever, at the time when his country and France were 
in internecine strife. This want of a pure moral 
power injured him as an artist. Complete integrity 
of being is indispensable for the literary artist es- 
pecially, whose material is human nature." 

Dr. Channing was certainly a proof that sovereign 
moral power gives the highest sensibility to art. I had 
seen w 7 hat the gentle, healthy enjoyment of external 
Nature and the relations of home-life could be when I 
was in Xewport, where the impression was similar to 
the one I get from reading; George Macdonald's novels, 
in which Nature's beauty is always introduced as so 
powerful a factor of the life of the noblest characters 
portrayed. But his enjoyment of art was no less. 
At Xewport, as I have before said, Dr. Channing 
seemed all the time to be holding a religious festival of 
the most joyous character, in companionship with the 
birds and flowers, the clouds and stars, the sunsets and 
sunrises, the ocean and the landscape ; and even in the 
city his daily walk lifted him out of the earthly turmoil, 
upon the wings of the breezes, into the circumambient 
sky, whenever the New England winter intermitted its 
severity even for a few hours. But I can only pick 
a flower here and there out of the conservatory of my 
memory of this lovely every-day life, which his feeble 
body alone made less to him than the spiritual heaven 
which he diffused around him upon all who came 
into his familiarity, as a husband, as a father, as the 
host of the few dear friends who frequented his house. 
He was all this and more as he grew older ; and a 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



333 



younger generation in companionship with his daugh- 
ter, who was full of social sympathies, began to gather 
around him. 

" Fine art/' he would often say, " is the peculiar 
recreation of man ; " but he would add, " it requires 
health of body to enjoy it more than Nature does. 
There are . times when I have been so feeble that a 
glance at the natural landscape, or even the sight of 
a beautiful flower, gave me a bodily pain from which 
I shrank ; and, when so ill, still less could I enjoy a 
masterpiece of art. But even then an act of virtue, 
holiness, disinterested love was soothing, refreshing, 
and strengthening." 

When Wordsworth's " Skylark " was first published, 
Dr. Channing found it in a newspaper and read it to 
me, as only he could read ; again and again recurring 
to these lines with delight, — 

" A privacy of glorious light is thine," and 
"True to the kindred points ©f heaven and home." 

Another time he read Shelley's " Skylark " with the 
keenest delight, and said, after dwelling on the inci- 
dents of the poet's history, which he had heard from 
Southey, who " did not interpret him profoundly," — 
" Shelley was a seraph gone astray, who needed friends 
that he never found in this world." ^ 

German literature began to be studied very exten- 
sively in Boston after Dr. Follen came ; and when he 
introduced his friend Francis Graeter as a teacher 
there, who taught Jean Paul to all his pupils, Dr. 
Channing greatly enjoyed translations made from his 
writings and handed about in manuscript, — such as 



340 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



u Thoughts of the best hours of life for the last hour " 
" Das Campaner Thai," etc. 

I never knew any person to whom the doctrine of 
immortality (which is the theme of the " Campaner 
Thai ") seemed to be so substantial — an ever-present 
enjoyment — as to Dr. Channing. He often spoke of 
the wisdom of Socrates' advice to Simmias, in the 
"Phsedo," to give himself up to his imagination, in 
order to clothe the abstract doctrine with conceivable 
forms ; and we have, among several sermons that he 
preached on the future life, one attempt to depict it 1 
which was struck out from him by a death in the 
immediate circle of his own friends. It has carried 
consolation into many another circle. The imagina- 
tive faculty he regarded as a gift of God only second 
to the moral faculty, and intended to give what George 
Macdonald happily calls " cubiccdness " to our life. 
When one of our " new light " friends, in a season 
of deep affliction, " waiting upon God for the daily 
bread of her spiritual life," said that the immortal 
future was nothing to her (I read him this from a 
letter), he expressed immense astonishment, and said 
his own belief in immortality was more than daily 
bread, — it was the very wine of life to his thirsting 
soul. 

When I went to him the next day he looked up, 
and without salutation immediately began: "Love 
without immortality ? What a curse it would be ! 
How little is the best we can do for those we love, 
merely in this sphere ! Unless we knew that what 
we were doing were seeds, to flower and fructify for- 

1 See vol. iv. of his Works. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 341 



ever and ever, even a parent's love were an intolerable 
burden of anguish " etc. 

The next time I went, he greeted me with another 
poem on immortality : "The capacity of knowledge 
without immortality, — what a tantalizing torment it 
would be ! How insufficient are the days of our life 
for the examination of any subject, even for the ob- 
servation of the very small portion of Nature which 
comes within our sphere of perception ! Why would 
the planet divined by Leverrier's mathematics send 
such a thrill through the civilized world, if it were 
not that we have relations to it sometime to be re- 
vealed ? What can we know ? The universe opens 
upon us vistas ; we have the beginnings of trains 
of thought : but how little way science leads us ! 
How tantalizing it would be, did not a state await us 
in which we may take up every thread and pursue it 
unimpeded to the heart of things ! " 

Another day he said: "Without immortality, the 
moral sentiments would be no boon, moral aspirations 
an intolerable burden. In time, we have such halt- 
ing virtues, such sense of manifold weaknesses and 
infirmities ! How could we endure the slow triumph 
of good over evil ? How could we understand the 
lives of the virtuous poor and afflicted ? How could 
we see the justice of God ? How could we under- 
stand God at all ? " 

My sister Mary went with me to see him and sing 
to him. He always expressed exquisite delight in 
the quality of her voice and the expression she threw 
into her simple style. He now said that the enjoy- 
ment was keener than ever, though the organ of 



342 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



hearing was feebler. "It is the soul that enjoys 
music, according to its progress, though the body de- 
cay. Jean Paul said music was a prophecy of im- 
mortality. What would the sense of beauty be 
without immortality ? How inconceivable that God 
should mock us with glimpses of such enjoyment 
never to be realized ! Music does not cheer those 
who do not believe in immortality, — it makes them 
sad; but they covet this sadness beyond all gross en- 
joyments. Beauty is sometimes described as a vain 
longing, — it is a longing, but not vain ! " 

I can never sufficiently regret that I did not write 
down these exquisite disquisitions, which explained 
his own more than resignation, and his patience with 
the natural and moral sufferings of mortal experience, 
to which he had the liveliest sensibility I have ever 
seen in a human being. But for this cultivation of his 
faith in immortality, his great sensibility would have 
made him gloomy. It did make him so in his early 
life, as can be discerned in the portrait of him made 
by Washington Allston, but which Allston con- 
demned, and later did his best to destroy. But this 
same sensibility, when given immortal wings, made 
him exquisitely happy, notwithstanding his ruined 
physical constitution and the intimate relations he 
chose to cultivate with the sorrowing and sinful. 
His ever-growing cosmopolitanism also very much 
relieved him of the effect of his intense personal sen- 
sibilities. The French Bevolution of July, 1830, 
made quite an era in his life, quickening the glorious 
hopes inspired in him of the progress and unification 
of humanity, by his comparison of Europe and Amer- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 343 

ica, on his visit to Europe in 1822. I wish I could 
find the letter he wrote to me from Newport at this 
time, asking me what was being done in Boston and 
Cambridge to celebrate this great event. He was 
deeply disappointed to hear how little excitement it 
produced in the country generally. He thought it 
argued a national disease of Epicurean selfishness 
and materialistic insensibility to those rights of man 
which are the foundation of our nationality, — if w.e 
have a nationality. 

He came up from Newport many weeks earlier 
than usual that year, in order to preach ; and his ser- 
mon on the text, "Honor all Men," 1 was the first he 
gave us. All winter his sermons showed how much 
he was moved by this crisis of European history. 

In the fall I introduced to him George S. Hillard, 
who had just graduated as first scholar from Harvard 
University. As soon as we were seated, Dr. Channing 
turned to him and in a gently ironical tone said : " I 
see you young gentlemen of Cambridge were quite too 
wise to be thrown out of your accustomed serenity by 
the new revolution in France ! I was in college in 
the days of the first French Eepublic, and at every 
crisis of its history our dignity was wholly upset ; we 
we're rushing to meetings of sympathy, or kindling 
bonfires of congratulation, and walking in torch-light 
processions. But now the young American has come 
to years of discretion, and may not give way to such 
unseemly excitements ! " 

" Oh, Sir," said Mr. Hillard, " let me cry you mercy ! " 

After some lively conversation, when he got up to 

1 See vol. iii. of his Works. 



344 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 

take leave, and Dr. Charming invited him cordially to 
come again, he said, " Yes, Sir, I will ; for you are the 
only young man I know ! " To which Dr. Channing 
replied, — 

" Always young for liberty ! " in a loud ringing tone 
that was almost an hurrah ! 

It was in that year that Dr. Channing took a house 
in Hamilton Place, hoping by this means to come in- 
to closer contact with people in general. He thirsted 
to commune with the common heart. He had come 
to think that his living in such a splendid mansion as 
Miss Gibbs's house might be the reason why people 
did not call upon him more. He had not had an 
independent house of his own, only because Mrs. 
Channing s chronic sufferings from the too frequent 
inheritance of luxurious ancestry made house-keeping 
a great burden to her, as he knew, — though he never 
did know how constant and acute was the pain in 
her eyes and hands, as her devoted love to him 
prompted a concealment of the degree of it, and 
she never wanted her friends to allude to it in his 
presence, so that he hardly knew she could not use 
her eyes or her fingers. 

He seemed to enjoy his residence in Hamilton 
Place, even the drawback of the smoky house, for he 
felt he was sharing the common lot. I had before 
seen it, but I was struck now more than ever with his 
social aspiration ; and was convinced that in nothing 
had his ill health depressed his natural character more 
than in keeping him so secluded. Mrs. Channing, I 
thought, did not realize that it was not a boon to him, 
as it was to her, to be so out of society ; and her very 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 345 



devotion to him unwittingly worked at cpss pur- 
poses with his disposition. 

I can, however, afford room for but little report of 
this period. But I will not omit some notes I have 
of one conversation with a lady of Albany, who made 
a visit of some weeks to Mrs. Channing. He was 
much disturbed that the society with which she was 
familiar was, according to her account, getting Euro- 
pean ideas about marriages. She said that good 
matches were more liable to be made if the parents 
and guardians, rather than the parties themselves, made 
the choice. He thought that the considerations 
should be personal, and respect individual fancies 
rather than external circumstances and worldly ad- 
vantages. It was all the better, he said, when poor 
men married rich girls, and poor girls rich men, pro- 
vided that the riches were never the object of either 
party. These contrasts of external condition brought 
a variety of experience that developed character, ex- 
tended sympathy, and broke up caste. It was tame, 
and apt to be heartless, when the rich married the 
rich ; and not fair that the poor should always marry 
the poor, and because they were poor. He much 
commended a common custom of the rich parents in 
Boston to secure the property of their daughters to 
themselves and their children; and he would have 
every security possible to save girls from fortune 
hunters. He rejoiced at the bad odor in which mer- 
cenary marriages were held in Boston by both sexes. 
He said that when he went abroad there was a. young 
Boston lady whom they constantly met and became 
intimate with, who devoted herself to the care of a 



346 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



husband evidently dying of consumption. A physi- 
cian in Nice expressed to Dr. Channing a great deal 
of surprise at this ; the young wife being so attractive 
and evidently gifted to shine in society. Dr. Chan- 
ning said that he replied " with some pride/' that this 
was the rule rather than the exception with his coun- 
try-women. The physician inquired into the manner 
of arranging marriages, and when Dr. Channing said 
that they were left to the fancy and choice of the 
young people themselves, he was taken quite aback 
by the physician's exclamation, " What a culpable 
carelessness ! " This gentleman thought parents neg- 
lected their duty, to let the passions of the young de- 
termine so important a relation. 

The lady from Albany seemed rather to agree with 
the physician of Nice. Dr. Channing said that the 
true guardian of marriage was affection, which the 
religiously-cultivated imagination has made pure. 
Sentiment was the real treasure-house of happiness. 
Everything which tends to divert attention from that 
truth destroys the living springs of character. 

I must relegate to the Appendix quite a long jour- 
nal that I made of a memorable evening passed with 
Washington Allston that winter in Hamilton Place. 
I will, however, put in here the notes of a shorter 
conversation, in which I attempted to give Dr. Chan- 
ning an account of one of Mr. Graeter's talks in my 
school to the drawing-class : — 

He told us that in Germany there was a work named 
" Tree ^Architecture," in which it was demonstrated 
that every species of tree was the product of two 
forces, whose action might be represented by an angle, 



KEMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



347 



more or less acute ; and this angle would be found in 
all the branchings down to the smallest twig, and also 
in the edging of the leaves. For instance, — to take 
the two extreme contrasts, — in the oak the forces 
are evenly balanced, so that the angle is a right angle. 
In the willow the angle is very acute. Now accord- 
ing to this angle is the shape of the light that sifts 
through the leaves, which in the oak is six-sided, and 
in the willow a narrow line. In representing this 
foliage with the pencil, it is necessary, Mr. Graeter 
says, to observe this peculiar shape of the light made 
by the leaves of the trees. He has quantities of en- 
gravings to show to his pupils, and he called attention 
to this nicety of representation ; and many of the 
children showed their taste for Nature by their quick 
recognition, naming the different trees. I expressed 
my surprise at this proof of their observation ; but 
Mr. Graeter said it was not intellectual observation 
but aesthetic sensibility, of which creative genius is 
the highest manifestation. The great artist, in mak- 
ing his landscape, made no mistake ; the Power that 
creates the universe sets through him, and guides his 
hand to reproduce what has entranced him. This 
aesthetic sensibility is genius, and instinctive. On 
examining the works of the Masters, it was found 
that they verified, as certainly as Nature does, the 
theory of the two forces. 

Where forces act at right angles the production is 
a very strong one. The oak does not yield to forces 
external to itself, nor obey the attraction of light like 
the willow. If it grows on the side of a hill it does 
not turn up to the light, but will press from within 



348 



REMINISCENGES OF DR. CHANNING. 



almost at a right angle from the soil, while a willow 
seems to be weak and is easily influenced from with- 
out. Hence a clump of willows is often a wild, 
tangled mass, for it has that want of inward balance 
which makes it too weak to resist the accidental forces 
from without, the strongest of which is the attraction 
of light. Now in looking at the works of Claude, 
Poussin, and others, we find that these masters made 
no mistake ; but their unerring judgment cannot be 
believed to be generalization from personal observa- 
tions, and far less calculations from mathematical 
principles. 

Dr. Channing listened with wide open eyes, in- 
tently gazing at me as I spoke, without himself say- 
ing a word ; and when I had finished, he continued 
lost in silent thought till his gaze became oppressive. 
At last he spoke in an exhausted voice, and said : 
" Yes, the soul is a gift of God. Nothing is so inter- 
esting as these proofs of the identity of human genius 
with the Power that created the universe. The dis- 
coveries of science have proved that the human 
intellect is divine, since its inductions show that the 
law^s of Nature and the laws of thought are identical, 
or at least correspondent. 

A problem having been propounded in the French 
Academy, as to what angle of union of the sides of a 
box would result in the greatest strength, with the 
least quantity of material, it was worked out and de- 
monstrated on the plane of pure mathematics ; and 
afterwards a naturalist had shown that this solution 
was illustrated in the construction of the honeycomb. 
But what Mr. Graeter had said intimated to him that 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 349 



not only our intellect, but our aesthetic sensibility like 
our moral sentiment, was no mere affection or tran- 
sient emotion, but the substantial divinity of the hu- 
man soul ; and for men of genius to see this tends 
to awaken conscience, and lead to a self-consecration 
that may save them from the degradation into which 
some fall, who are greately gifted, — though he 
thought genius of the very highest order was not so 
liable to fall as that of the second degree. A little 
light might lead astray. A broad flood of it en- 
lightened. When the aesthetic sensibility and the 
moral sentiment were pretty nearly in equilibrium, 
the man became an oak, to resist all outside influences. 
When the aesthetic sensibility was not so balanced, 
we had the willows of humanity. But here is proof 
that the artistic in man is also the divine. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



k HE materials accumulated in my journals and 



A correspondence, for an account of Dr. Channing 
in his relations with his most noted contemporaries, 
are ample; indeed, I have quite an embarrassment 
of riches touching such men as Eowland G. Hazard, 
Orestes A. Brownson, A. Bronson Alcott, the leading 
Antislavery men, Balph Waldo Emerson, Horace 
Mann, George Ripley, Theodore Parker, and James 
Freeman Clarke. I must content myself with only a 
few extracts, making intelligible the few letters I se- 
lect from a portfolio of fifty, many of which are too 
personal to myself to print. But some of these, also, 
I must put in, to redeem the promise I made in the 
first paragraph of this volume; though, in doing so, I 
make myself a living sacrifice. 

It always seemed to be recreation to Dr. Channing 
to go into purely speculative thought. In this partic- 
ular there was a quite wide-spread misapprehension 
of him among his contemporaries. It was not unfre- 
quently said, " Dr. Channing is a great moralist and 
the best kind of religious genius ; but no 'pliiloso-plwv" . 
This view has, however, been ably controverted by 
Rowland G. Hazard in his essay on " The Philosophi- 
cal Character of Dr. Channing," which I should much 
like to bind up with this volume. The enjoyment to 




REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 351 



which T was witness, in his readings to me from Cou- 
sin's " Plato," Constant's " History of Eeligion," which 
involves the author's philosophy of religion, and es- 
pecially the exhilaration that Cousin's " Introduction 
to .Philosophy " and " Examination of Locke " pro- 
duced in him when I read to him translations of 
these works, sufficiently proved to me that there was 
no lack in him of a pure metaphysical faculty. 

His knowledge of Eowland G. Hazard dated from 
the anonymous publication of " Language, by a Heto- 
riscian," which I read to him when it first appeared. 
He immediately recognized a rare metaphysical gen- 
ius in its author, and said, " I must find out this young 
man. He is evidently young and unpractised in the 
literary art, but he thinks originally and profoundly ; 
and I believe that he is the one to answer Edw r ards 
1 On the Will,' which has never been answered yet on 
its own logical ground." The next summer he wrote 
me from Newport that he had " found Hetoriscian in 
a manufacturing firm in Ehode Island ; quite occu- 
pied with practical business at present, but to be, 
as I think, a star in the intellectual firmament by- 
and-by." 

A letter which I have received from Mr. Hazard, 
in answer to one of mine asking him to tell me of his 
intercourse with Dr. Channing, will show that we are 
indebted to Dr. Channing's intuitive perception of 
genius in this instance for Hazard's " Freedom of Man 
in Willing" and " Letters to John Stuart Mill " in cle- 
fence of that work and kindred subjects, involving an 
answer to Edwards " On the Will." 1 

1 See Appendix. 



352 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

In this connection I am reminded of having read 
to Dr. Channing a manuscript received from Ehode 
Island, in which it was maintained that the human 
being was combined of a spiritual soul and an animal 
soul, — the latter the effect of organization, all whose 
manifestations were necessary, and which was mortal, 
while the former was free, self-determining, and im- 
mortal. It m was a severe scientific statement, without 
any moral declamation- or sentimentality, which, not 
contravening the doctrine of free-will, explained many 
phenomena that seem to contradict that great princi- 
ple. As I remember it dimly, I think it would recon- 
cile Darwin's " Descent of Man " with the immortal 
certainties of the Platonic philosophy and Christian 
faith, which I hold to be twin sisters, whose estrange- 
ment is — 

" A grief 
Past all balsam and relief." 

I mention the subject here that I may beg the au- 
thor (whose name I never knew), should he ever read 
these lines, to publish that paper now. Dr. Channing 
was much struck with it, but did not believe it would 
find any considerable sale, so great was his doubt of 
the interest of the community at that time in such 
problems ; and he may have said this to the author. 
It was, I think, too long for a magazine article. 

Dr. Channing's sermon on " Likeness to God," 
preached at Mr. Farley's ordination, made one crisis in 
the spiritual history of Orestes A. Brownson, who, at 
the time he came across it, w r as suffering the extreme 
reaction of his earlier Presbyterian life, from which he 
was emancipated by receiving a confidential circular 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 353 

from the synod, counselling him and his brethren in 
the pulpit to work secretly to get the education of the 
country into their power, by means of electing all 
civil and political officers of their communion. This 
proposition alarmed Mr. Brownson's American in- 
stincts, bringing the question before his mind of the 
comparative sacredness of his allegiance to State or 
Church. 

This remarkable man, of French and Indian an- 
cestry, — at home, therefore, in both the French and 
English languages, — had grown up an American 
democrat of the most pronounced stamp, which 
was never lost to his dying day. Of course, the 
American citizen conquered the ecclesiastic, and he 
published the letter of the synod, which, as he con- 
fidently believed, defeated the project of these Prot- 
estant Jesuits. This bold act separated him from 
the Presbyterian Church, and he drifted into the 
Universalist sect, from which he was subsequently 
attracted by Fanny Wright into the extreme of Radi- 
calism. This quickened all his inward belligerency, 
yet at the same time starved a naturally religious 
temperament. But on reading Dr. Channing' s ser- 
mon, a new world, he said, seemed to open on him ; 
and he immediately went to Boston, all on fire to set 
up a " Church of Humanity," expecting the sympa- 
thy of Dr. Channing and the Unitarian ministers. 
The latter he did not get, except by-and-by that 
of George Ripley; but Dr. Channing and Dr. Fol- 
len received him kindly. What attracted Dr. Chan- 
nino- to Mr. Brownson was his interest in the laboring 
classes. A letter given hereafter will show how he 

23 



354 REMINISCENCES OF DR CHANNING. 

regarded the opposite characteristics of Mr. Brown- 
son. At first he expected a great deal from him as 
a preacher to some society needing a liberal Christian 
teacher. 

There was in Boston at that time a society of Athe- 
ists, whose prophet was one Abner Kneeland, once, 
like Mr. Brownson, a Universalist preacher. This 
man had been silenced and imprisoned by the revival 
of an old Puritan law that had never been formally 
repealed, and Dr. Channing had lately put his name 
to a petition for his release from prison, much to the 
scandal of many of his Federal-street congregation, 
who did not gauge the depths of the principle of 
keeping the Uzzah hands of the civil power off the 
Ark of the Lord. Dr. Channing now suggested to 
Mr. Brownson to make Abner Kneeland's people the 
object of his pastoral care, as well as to preach to 
the followers of Fanny Wright on the sacredness of 
labor. I heard him tell Mr. Brownson that when 
Fanny Wright was in Boston, and challenged the de- 
fenders of property, marriage, and religion to meet 
her in a public discussion, he should have accepted 
the challenge himself, had he had ordinary bodily 
strength ; " for," said he, " though I knew she could 
make a strong case of the abuses of property, mar- 
riage, and religion in our civilization, I felt I could 
prove that it was only by these three things we had 
"been or could be lifted above the brutes." Mr. 
Brownson was not loath to undertake this enterprise ; 
and I believe it is a fact that he did annihilate or 
transform that society, of which we heard no more. 

With the subsequent transformations of Mr. Brown- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 355 



son this narrative has nothing to do. I only record 
the fact that the religious career which ended in the 
Eoman Catholic Church, began with reading Dr. 
Channing's "Likeness to God." 

Mr. A. Bronson Alcott first came to Boston, in 1827, 
at the call of the ladies who established the first 
Charity Infant School, in consequence of their having 
seen some remarkable articles of his in the first Jour- 
nal of Education, edited by Mr. William Eussell. He 
returned to Boston in 1832, after three years' resi- 
dence in Germantown and Philadelphia, where he 
first became a reader of Coleridge and Plato. It was 
his purpose to teach children to understand and con- 
trol themselves in the first years of their lives. And 
after having shown in the Charity School what could 
be done for the development of the conscience of the 
children of the poor, he had kept a private infant 
school, which had given him such a reputation with 
mothers that his return to Boston was received by 
them most cordially. 

I happened then to be at leisure in the house of a 
friend, while my own school was suspended, because 
my sister Mary, my indispensable assistant, was for 
two years in the West Indies with an invalid sister. 
The only difficulty Mr. Alcott had in collecting his 
school was, that the children who went to it could 
not be qualified to enter the Boston Latin School. 
But I was so desirous to see Mr. Alcott work out his 
idea, that I volunteered to teach the elements of 
Latin and geography in the afternoons, Mr. Alcott 
confining himself to teaching the English language 
by methods enabling him to awaken by words the 



356 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

spiritual consciousness and moral power, which he 
truly considered the fundamental thing in education. 

Dr. Charming was greatly interested, and often vis- 
ited the school, in which were a niece and nephew 
of his own. On occasion of my publishing the 
" Eecorcl of a School," which was a journal of one 
month's conversations in it, Dr. Channing wrote me 
the following letter. Before introducing it I will 
remark, that, in the subsequent editions of the 
" Record of a School," the chapter he refers to (on 
" General Principles ") was left out. The edition 
published by Roberts Brothers, forty years after the 
first, leaves out much of the original Record, and 
contains my own final judgment on Mr. Alcott's 
plans in comparison with those of Frederic Froebel, 
who, instead of beginning with thinking, begins by 
doing something 'to be thought about, — thus preventing 
that abstract introversion which Dr. Channing thought 
the questionable thing in Mr. Alcott's method. 

Newport, August 24, 1835. 

My Dear Miss Peabody, — I intended to write you 
a long letter by Mrs. Channing, who takes this, but my 
house has been full of friends who have left me no 
leisure. I thank you for your " Record," which I have 
read with much pleasure. I have still doubts ; but the 
aim is the true one (development rather than instruction), 
and I earnestly desire that the experiment should be made. 
I want proof that the minds of the children really act on 
the subjects of conversation ; that their deep conscious- 
ness is stirred. Then I want light as to the degree to 
which the mind of the child should be turned inward. 
The free development of the spiritual nature may be im- 
peded by too much analysis of it. The soul is somewhat 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 357 

jealous of being watched, and it is no small part of wis- 
dom to know when to leave it to its impulses, and when 
to restrain it. The strong passion of the young for the 
outward is an indication of Mature to be respected ; spirit- 
uality may be too exclusive for its own good. 

I have suggested these difficulties before in conversa- 
tion, and repeat them, — not to discourage the experi- 
ment, but to insure its success. No one has more interest 
in it than myself. Mr. Alcott's reverence for the spiritual 
is the first great qualification of a teacher; and I want 
it to be so combined with other qualifications, and so mani- 
fested, as to give a new tone to instruction. Your chapter 
on " General Principles " interested me much. It is fall of 
fine thoughts ; but the lights are somewhat too scattered. 
If your inspirations had more consecutiveness and con- 
nection, they would do more good ; you are too apt to 
leave a good idea without the required modfi cations. You 
start from happiness, — a dangerous point of departure. 
The whole selfish philosophy has grown from the error of 
placing enjoyment before morality. 

I have not time to say more ; but let my remarks prove, 
not that I love to find fault, but how much I am inter- 
ested in your work. I had a very agreeable visit from Mr. 
Alcott; I only regretted that so much of the time was 
spent in controversy. We agree too well to differ. I have 
heard nothing yet of the spirit of the meeting on Friday 
last. If you have had any opportunity of ascertaining 
it, do give me a line. 

Very sincerely your friend, 

Wm. E. Channing. 

With William Lloyd Garrison I think Dr. Chan- 
ning never came into personal contact ; but when Mr. 
Garrison began to edit the " Liberator " in Boston, Dr. 



358 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



Channing was one of the first subscribers ; and among 
the things which I read to him were the early num- 
bers of this paper. 

The first impression made on me by its motto and 
the fierceness of its attacks upon the Colonization So- 
ciety were shocking ; and I remember I was some- 
what surprised that Dr. Channing at all tolerated 
what seemed to me the most unchristian and unrea- 
sonable violence and indiscriminate rage against the 
whole South, and most of the North as well. Dr. 
Channing admitted and lamented the violence and 
want of discriminations, and agreed with me that the 
Constitution of the United States was not to be given 
up on account of those terrible compromises which 
were paralyzing the energy necessary to throw them 
off. But he so entirely agreed with the principle 
which inspired Garrison, believing that it was the last 
sacrilege to make a chattel of a human being, that he 
shared the feeling that seemed to have overwhelmed 
the understanding of the young agitator, and drove 
him on blindfold. Dr. Channing would say, " Garri- 
son knows he is right in the great principle ; he knows 
that it is of God ; and so everything he thinks he re- 
gards as corollary to the unquestionable truth. The 
evil he has undertaken to fight is enough, you must 
admit, to craze the greatest mind. I can forgive the 
excesses of a generous humanity ; they are rare." 

When Garrison began to attack Dr. Channing per- 
sonally, it did not seem to alter his feeling, but exaspe- 
rated mine. He had feared that the tone of the paper 
would kindle ungovernable passions in the negroes of 
the North, as well as in the slaveholders, instead of per- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 359 

suading them ; and he thought at one time of giving 
such check as might be in his disapproval, by drop- 
ping his subscription. But after the attack upon him- 
self he would not do so. He lamented that he could 
not give the right-hand of fellowship to every oppo- 
nent of slavery, and further every earnest attempt to 
remove it. I heard him say to Dr. Follen . " I am 
thankful that you can see your way clear to join the 
Antislavery Society ; and I hope you will have such 
influence in its counsels that they may convince the 
North that it is our duty to offer compensation to the 
slave-holders, as they are doing in England. I have 
not bodily strength to attend their meetings, and 
strive with these stormy youths to act on Christian 
principles, — one of which is to hold an even balance, 
and do justice to every shade of good, even in the 
bad ; to judge and condemn the sin unsparingly, but 
remember the sinner is our neighbor." 

That there was nothing of moral compromise or 
selfish fear of pain in. Dr. Channing, I have an anec- 
dote to illustrate. A Cuban slave-holder, a very 
skilful physician and great admirer of Dr. Channing's 
genius, who owned two adjoining plantations, was one 
day urging him to make a winter's visit to him for 
the benefit of his health ; and told him that all the 
punishments of the slaves, while he remained at his 
house, should be administered on the other planta- 
tion out of his sight and hearing, on which Dr. Chan- 
ning rose and abruptly quitted the room, without a 
sign of salutation. He said he could not " trust him- 
self to speak, after receiving such an insult, — as if 
his objection to the punishments, which were evi- 



360 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAN XING. 



dently so terrible, was the pain it might give to his 
own sympathetic nerves ! " 

Dr. Channing was much pained at the " mob of 
gentlemen of standing" in State Street, Boston, in 
1836, as he had been at the attacks upon the Ladies' 
Antislavery Society. He had made himself quite 
conspicuous at the time of the shooting of Lovejoy 
at Alton, Illinois, by calling the meeting at Faneuil 
Hall to protest, in the name of the United States Con-- 
stitution, against curtailing the Abolitionists of their 
liberty of prophesying. The meeting on that clay 
called out Wendell Phillips for the first time, and 
gave occasion for Charles Sumner's answer to Austin, 
— which was his maiden effort. It was anonymous. 
I read it to Dr. Channing, who thought it the produc- 
tion of some great mature lawyer, and told me after- 
wards he had learned it was by young Sumner. 

Dr. Channing has so fully expressed himself on the 
subject of Slavery in print, that I need not give any 
space to explaining his positive views. In the course 
of the controversy he was assailed with the charge of 
living in luxury on the proceeds of rum-selling and 
slave-trading — which w T ere charged on his uncle and 
father-in-law. I w^as extremely indignant at this bru- 
tal attack, and wrote to him to get his denial of the 
facts, which I was sure were exaggerated if not en- 
tirely invented. I will give his reply : — 

Boston, March 23, 1838. 

My Dear Miss Peabody, — Your last letter asks a 
question which I am willing to answer, because it affects 
the reputation of those who have gone. I remember that 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



361 



forty years ago my wife's father owned a distillery, of 
which he sold the product to those who wanted it, without 
asking questions about the use, which was then universal. 
I learn from one now living, and who knows more of the 
business then done by Mr. Gibbs than any other person, 
that now and then rum was sold to a firm supposed to be 
engaged in the slave-trade just as it was sold to other peo- 
ple. This, so far as I can learn, is the ground of the 
charge referred to in your letter. I know no other. 

The distillery was a very trifling item in Mr. G.'s vast 
concerns. The whole profit from it was a drop of the 
bucket compared with what he gained from a commerce 
spread over the globe, and the share of profit from selling 
to slave-dealers a mere nothing. I have paid the debt, 
many times, by my labors in the cause of Slavery. Such 
charges would make me smile, if they did not indicate un- 
principled malice. For the sake of giving me a stab, a man 
is dragged from his grave, who died thirty-five years ago, 
whose contemporaries are almost passed away, and who 
was distinguished by generosity, public spirit, integrity, 
large sympathies, and an enterprise so bold and successful 
as to make him the benefactor of his native- place. 

In regard to Miss Martineau, it was a letter from the 
Pollens, not me, which led her to write about the rumor 
which she was said to have circulated to my disadvantage. 
I should never have introduced the subject to her. In 
truth, I gave no importance to it. Miss M.'s bad habits 
of judging and talking rashly affect me less on account of 
their universality. If I give her up on this account, I 
know not where to stop. As Paul says, " I must needs go 
out of the world." I must stop both ears. What is the 
staple of conversation but "personal talk" with little or no 
foundation 1 I have very little faith in what I hear from 
those who know the world best. One of the keenest ob- 



362 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



servers cautioned me against you. Men see but half of one 
another. My whole life has been a lesson of candor. The 
worst man I know has wealth, office, and a place in good 
society ; and still more, I am sure, he has a conscience, and 
moral capacities as well as myself, and may be one day a 
spotless spirit. I find deep mysteries in human nature. I 
comprehend no man, not even myself. I am attracted to 
a man who has some touches of magnanimity, some un- 
confined sympathies, some glimpses of perfection, some 
faith in the unattained, some recognition of an unworldly 
standard of right ; but such a man will have his errors and 
weaknesses. A great idea is disproportioned to the rest of 
the character, and often inflames the imagination, and 
makes a man very inconsistent. The great is not the fault- 
less, and is very open to vulgar criticism and ridicule ; and 
yet with all its faults I cling to it, and care little for the 
hard measure meted to it by the world. 

I know the faults of the Antislavery people as much 
as you can, but they hold fast to some great principles in 
defiance of the world. That defiance is worth a great deal. 
I expect them to act weakly.. People of common or weak 
minds, when they stray beyond the bounds of opinion, are 
apt to take liberties, run wild, become conceited and cen- 
sorious, etc. But if there be at the bottom a generous im- 
pulse and a strong conviction, I forgive much. I can bear 
them more patiently than the calculating, self-seeking, mo- 
notonous, compromising, stationary multitude. Yet I am 
far from despising these last. The dead people who walk 
about our streets and do business on exchange are not 
wholly dead. They all have a sphere, however narrow, in 
which they live, are self-moved, are not wholly the crea- 
tures of foreign impulse. Thus I look on the world, finding 
much to love and hope for, where little good meets the eye. 
Very truly yours, 

W. E. Chaxxixg. 



REMINISCENCES OF DK. CHANNING. 



363 



P. S. Have you any authority but rumor for saying that 
Garrison made the gross charge against me 1 To rumor I 
give no weight. I do not believe he said this. 

W. E. C. 

The " gross charge " was that Dr. Channing was 
living in luxury on the " price of human blood," 
— the Gibbs property being the production of rum- 
selling and slave-trading. I think it appeared in the 
" Liberator." 



CHAPTEE XXIII. 



TN the history of the so-called Transcendental move- 
ment of New England I know no name older 
than Dr. Channing's. I have told how his preaching 
in 1820 began to emancipate me from the materialis- 
tic system of Priestley, and his conversation in 1825 
from that of Brown, and his introducing me to 
Coleridge, from whom I first learned the meaning 
of the word "transcendental." And when Carlyle's 
writings and Ralph Waldo Emerson's lectures, in 
1832, began to quicken our Boston thinking, it seemed 
to me that at last Dr. Channing's spiritual philosophy 
had begun to pervade society, and was about to give 
it the depth and broad scope of the original Christian 
faith. 

In the last year of Dr. Channing's life I one day 
said to him, showing him a passage in his sermon on 
"Likeness to God," — "Lieutenant Greene says the 
whole Transcendental movement in New England is 
wrapped up in this paragraph ": " The divine attributes • 
are first developed in ourselves, and thence transferred 
to our Creator. The idea of God, sublime and awful 
as it is, is the idea of our own spiritual nature, pur- 
ified and enlarged to infinity. In ourselves are the 
elements of the Divinity. God does not sustain a 
figurative resemblance to man ; it is the resemblance 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



365 



of a parent to a child, the likeness of kindred na- 
tures." 

Dr. Channing took the book, and after reading the 
passage said : " All that I have said there is true. But 
the development of the divine attributes in ourselves 
is the realization not of what is peculiar to any indi- 
vidual, but what is common to all men, and manifested 
in the utmost purity by Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 
who is the unfallen ideal man. The clanger that be- 
sets our Transcendentalists is that they sometimes 
mistake their individualities for the Transcendent. 
What is common to men and revealed by Jesus tran- 
scends every single individuality, and is the spiritual 
object and food of all individuals." 

I asked, " Don 't you think Mr. Emerson recognizes 
this?" 

" Yes," he replied, " in the poems of the ' Problem ■ 
and of the ' Sphinx ' I think he does. But many of 
his professed followers do not, and fall into a kind of 
ego-theism, of which a true understanding of Jesus 
Christ is the only cure, as I more and more believe." 

I have not the date of this conversation, but it 
was after the poems referred to came out in the 
"Dial." 

Dr. Channing's daughter was one among the many 
young persons whose whole souls were seized by Mr. 
Emerson's lectures. When I left Boston for Salem, 
in 1836, 1 became almost the dailj recipient of letters 
from the young ladies who had been my pupils, which 
w T ere full of the enthusiasm these lectures awakened. 
One of Mary Channing's letters begins with the 
words : " Oh, Miss Peabody ! when one hears one of 



366 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

these lectures of Mr. Emerson, one feels one can 
never do wrong any more ! " 

Since Dr. Channing, on account of the delicacy of 
his health and because he was deaf in one ear, could 
not attend these lectures with enjoyment or safety, 
his daughter often borrowed the manuscripts to read 
to him ; and I never heard him express anything but 
pleasure and essential agreement with them. That 
all the young people should be set on fire to learn 
what was the special activity and work that- their 
individual natures had fitted them for was an effect 
which could not fail to interest him. I remember 
his having expressed great personal respect for Mr. 
Emerson's severe sincerity and moral independence 
in relinquishing the pulpit of the North Church, 
rather than let it be supposed by his people that he 
took the bread and wine himself in the Communion 
service, — though he told them he was willing to 
administer it to them, if they thought it did them 
any good ; for he believed in the value of a season of 
communion upon the life and death of Christ, which 
was however only disturbed in his own mind by the 
Oriental expression of ideas he worshipped. It was 
on this occasion that I first heard Dr. Channing 
speak of Mr. Emerson. He afterwards very much 
rejoiced in what he saw to be Mr. Emerson's perso- 
nal influence upon me ; for it was true that this ter- 
rible Idealist did more to correct my morbid moral 
sensibility than Dr. Channing had been able to do, — 
through my fault however, not his ; for there was 
no more weak sentimentality in Dr. Channing's relig- 
ion than in Mr. Emerson's. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



367 



Between 1836 and 1840, circumstances kept me in 
more constant and close relation with Mr. Emerson's 
mind than with Dr. Channing's ; but I wrote to the lat- 
ter a good deal, and often from Mr. Emerson's own 
house, — being in intimate relations with Mrs. Emerson 
during the first years of her married, life. It is only 
since I have known Froebel's law of " the connection 
of related contrasts " as the law of all life, spiritual and 
material, that I have myself understood why it was 
that Mr. Emerson's doctrine of Thought made me 
completely understand Dr. Channing's doctrine of 
Love ; and how it was that my long apprenticeship 
with the latter enabled me to receive a peculiar 
blessing from the former. I could apply to their 
united influence the blessing which Mr. Emerson 
ascribes to the " Two Travellers/' who " hand in hand 
through every nook of Nature go ; " from whom united 
" nought is hidden ; " to whom allied is " nought for- 
bidden." 

I cannot precisely identify the date, but I distinctly 
remember Dr. Channing's saying to rne that he had 
just found a fact in Jouffroy which interested him 
personally very much. Jouffroy said that Dr. Price's 
"Dissertations on Matter and Spirit" had been trans- 
lated into German in their day, and had produced a 
much greater impression in Germany than they did 
in England. Jouffroy thought they were the first 
movers of the German mind into the transcendental 
direction. " Now," said Dr. Channing, " I read Price 
when I was in college. Only three books that 1 read at 
that time were of any moment, to me : one was Fer- 
guson on " Civil Society," one Hutcheson's "Moral 



368 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAN XING. 



Philosophy/' and one was Price's " Dissertations." 
Price saved me from Locke's philosophy. He gave 
me the Platonic doctrine of ideas, and like him I 
always write the words Plight, Love, Idea, etc., with 
a capital letter. His book, probably, moulded my 
philosophy into the form it has always retained, and 
opened my mind into the transcendental depth. And 
I have always found in the accounts I have read of 
German philosophy in Madame de Stael, and in these 
later times, that it was cognate to my own. I cannot 
say that I have ever received a new idea from it ; and 
the cause is obvious, if Price was alike the father of 
it and of m iner 

When Mr. Norton's pamphlet on " The Latest 
Form of Infidelity," as he called Transcendentalism, 
came out, denouncing George Ripley's review of Mar- 
tineau's " Rationale of Religious Inquiry," I remem- 
ber that when I read the " Rationale " to Dr. Chan- 
ning, he made a similar criticism to Mr. Ripley's on 
the passage where, after giving a fine argument for 
inspiration, resting it upon intuitive grounds, Mr. 
Martmeau knocks it all in the head by saying that 
nothing can supersede the authority of inspiration 
except a sensible voice well authenticated. (I quote from 
memory.) He also pointed it out to Mr. -Phillips in 
my presence, and asked him if he " had observed that 
jump backward ; " to which Mr. Phillips responded, 
" Yes, and is it not extraordinary ? " 

Dr. Channing had always expressed a high esteem 
and much friendship for Mr. Xorton ; but, as he once 
said to me, "differed from him radically in phi- 
losophy," and "never was influenced by him with 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



369 



respect to individuals." I remember once hearing Dr. 
Follen, who did not at all agree with Mr. Norton on 
the principles and method with which he criticised 
the students' preaching, describe Dr. Channing's read- 
ing one of his most eloquent sermons to Mr. Norton, 
and stopping constantly in the most deferential man- 
ner to hear his criticisms, which, Dr. Pollen said, 
sounded like " sacrilegious ice upon Dr. Channing's 
fervor." Dr. Pollen inferred that Dr. Channing over- 
rated Mr. Norton ; but I think that such deference 
Dr. Channing would have shown to any critic upon 
himself, and I never saw anything like being influ- 
enced by Mr. Norton in his mind or his manners. 

Mr. Eipley took the view of inspiration to w T hich 
miracles were subsidiary, in opposition to Mr. Nor- 
ton's view; who held to miracles but not to inspira- 
tbon, even of the Hebrew prophets. Dr. Channing 
did not understand Mr. Eipley to deny the miracles ; 
and Mr. Ripley did not do so at that time, but posi- 
tively believed them, and took a view of inspiration 
with which Dr. Channing agreed, if Mr. Norton did 
not. Dr. Channing said Mr. Eipley triumphantly 
vindicated his view as the doctrine of Luther and the 
original Eeformed Church generally; but d do not 
remember ever to have heard him speak of his vindi- 
cation of Schleiermacher from Mr. Norton's attacks. 
Dr. Channing had great objections to Pantheism, and 
to any philosophy which would fix all attention upon 
ideas to the exclusion of heings who could suffer and 
were morally conscious. But he was not so apt to 
suspect Pantheism, or mere Idealism, as some people 
were. He knew it was difficult to do justice to the 



370 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



spiritual views he so highly valued without running 
into expressions that, logically interpreted, might lead 
into too great rarefaction ; and he always interpreted 
people kindly. 

Speaking of miracles reminds me of Carlyle's 
view, who makes them a corollary of the Transcen- 
dental principle. Dr. Channing always enjoyed 
Caiiyle to a very great degree. He used to call him 
" the single review-writer in Europe who was alive" 
and often contrasted him favorably with Macaulay, 
whom he characterized as " the best kind of writer 
who could be popular ; a little better, and he could 
not be popular ! " When the " Sartor Eesartus " was 
put into his hands, he said to me that he scarce 
ever was so completely taken out of himself. " Cer- 
tainly it gave me no new idea, but it was a perfect 
quickener of all my ideas. And when I came to the 
end, I tried to analyze its peculiar power. I found it 
was genius. It w r as a perfectly original way of ex- 
pressing the spiritual idea. I do not wonder at the 
effect it has produced." 

When the plan of the " Dial," to be edited by Mr. 
Ripley and Margaret Fuller, was made, Dr. Channing 
cheered o# the undertaking with his sympathy; and 
I remember Mr. Eipley saying to me that he thought 
it the crowning glory of Dr. Channing that, him- 
self the author of one great movement, he so gener- 
ously looked upon another, — which, as Mr. Eipley 
phrased it, "was a reform upon his reform," — and 
that he showed in his old age the same generous faith 
in freedom of inquiry and abandonment of tradition 
that he showed in his youth. In short, the * move- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 371 



ment party" found him, whenever they went to him 
for sympathy, ready to sympathize ; and if he criti- 
cised measures, he always said God-speed to the spirit 
of the thing. " Nothing/' he would say to me some- 
times, " terrifies me in these wildest movements. 
What has for years terrified and discouraged me is 
apathy" Mr. Emerson said once, when Dr. Chan- 
ning was ill and there was some alarm about him, 
* In our wantonness we often flout. Dr. Channing, and 
say he is getting old ;. but as soon as he is ill we re- 
member he is our Bishop, and we have not done with 
him yet." 

Dr. Channing was disappointed in the " Dial." He 
said it did not display the ability he had expected. 
He thought it a pity that Dr. Hedge did not have 
more to do with it. " There is no finer mind than 
Mr. Hedge's, and his culture is remarkable." When 
George Eipley was first denounced by Mr. Norton for 
his views on Inspiration, Dr. Channing said that a 
new periodical ought to be started. But Dr. Hedge's 
scheme of the " Transcendentalist," which dated 
nearly ten years before, had died away, and Dr. 
Hedge had been for some years settled at Bangor. 
Perhaps Dr. Hedge might have introduced Transcen- 
dentalism in such a way that it would not have be- 
come identified with the extreme Individualism which 
is now perhaps indelibly associated with it in Amer- 
ica, — he being somewhat conservative by constitution, 
and believing in the perpetuity of the Christian 
Church as a visible body in the midst of society. 

This is perhaps as good a place as any to record 
what Dr. Channing said of Dr. Furness's book on the 



372 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



miracles of Jesus. He liked Dr. Furness very much, 
but he did not think his view of the miracles ex- 
hausted the secret of the matter. He said it was a 
theory which did not strike him as true, a priori, and 
he did not see that Dr. Furness brought any strong 
arguments to support it. But Dr. Furness's book, he 
thought, had a charming effect ; he " valued it much 
to lend. It was full of Christian feeling and glow. 
It showed a hearty love of and a true reverence for 
Jesus Christ. The first six chapters are the very 
best specimens of Biblical criticism I ever saw." 

It was in June, 1838, that Mr. Emerson was invi- 
ted by the students of the Divinity School in Cam- 
bridge to address them on the occasion of their grad- 
uation. This address I w r ent to hear. Twelve years 
before, I had listened to Dr. Channiug when he 
preached the sermon dedicating that Hall to free 
inquiry, independent thought, and the spirit of mar- 
tyrdom, from the text, " His w 7 ord was with power." 1 
It seemed to me — and I said so to Dr. Francis, who 
was with me on the occasion of Mr. Emerson's ad- 
dress — that there never before had been a discourse . 
there that so justified the foundation principle of the 
Divinity School, as it was stated by Dr. Channing in 
his dedication sermon ; and when Mr. Norton's and 
Mr. "Ware's deprecating protests appeared, I felt that 
not they, but Mr. Emerson, embodied the idea of Dr. 
Channing's Christian teacher. And now forty years 
later, in May, 1879, another discourse, delivered by 
Mr. Emerson on a similar invitation of the students 
of the Divinity School, proves to me that my unwa- 

1 See vol. iii. of his Works, pp. 257-283. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



373 



verin^ conviction that Mr. Emerson has never lost 
his spiritual identification with Christ, but preached 
him better than he knew perhaps, is justified. I had 
reason for my faith then. It was my privilege, being 
in Mr Emerson's house when he was preparing his 
discourse of 1838 for the press, to see the original 
manuscript, where I observed a passage that he omit- 
ted in the public reading merely for want of time. 
This passage was a warning which, perhaps, had it 
been published then, would have saved many a weak 
brother and sister Transcendentalist from goim? into 
the extreme of ego-theism, which has discredited a true 
principle. It was a warning against making the new 
truth a fanaticism. Too soon, said he, we shall have 
the puppyism of a pretension of looking down on the 
head of all human culture ; setting up against Jesus 
Christ every little self magnified. (This was the 
sense of the passage, for of course I forget the exact 
words.) I begged him to print it then, since it was 
part of the original. He reflected a while, and then 
said : " No ; those gentlemen have committed them- 
selves against what I did read, and it would not be 
courteous or fair to spring upon them this passage 
now, which would convict them of an unwarranted 
inference." I thought this an extreme of gentleman- 
liness, but saw that Mr.' Emerson's aim was nothing 
less than to induce others to look for the truth for 
themselves, and not to prove that he had found it. 
He was not writing for victory for himself, but for 
truth's sake. If he kept to the truth in what he did 
publish, that must draw the whole truth after it, as 
he said, and in due time refute all false inferences. 



374 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNIXG. 



I was not surprised that false inferences were made, 
till I heard, from what seemed to be an authority, 
that Dr. Charming had said that Mr. Norton and Mr. 
Ware had a right to be offended, because Mr. Emerson 
had gone to an institution expressly founded on the 
New Testament, to contravene its fundamental prim- 
eiples. I could not believe this, and went up from 
Salem to see him, and asked him to appoint a time 
when we could have a good long talk ; for I had 
heard something which had raised the doubt whether 
I had truly understood him all my life long. Was 
he willing to tell me the last secret of his devotion, 
and how he understood his own most intimate rela- 
tion to God ? 

" Yes," said he, " I am willing to tell all that I 
know of it myself to so earnest an inquirer as you, 
and who has, I think, frankly told me all her secrets 
of the same nature." 

After dinner he continued sitting at the table with 
his wife and daughter and myself; and with the 
loveliest frankness presented himself for me to inter- 
rogate to my heart's content. I put questions categor- 
ically, and he answered deliberately, letting me have 
all the lead. I think the notes I made immediately 
afterwards, and which I now copy, will give what 
was said, correctly. 

"Is worship with you an act of free will?" was 
my first question. 

" In a certain important sense it is," he replied. 
I can refrain from looking at that in God which makes 
me his loving servant. This moral possibility gives 
to my will the terrible responsibility of choice, — 
but glorious as terrible." 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



375 



" What is that in God which makes you perforce 
his loving servant, when you see it ? " I asked. 

"His goodness, justice, and pure love," he said. 

" What is pure love ? " I continued. 

"Love without self-reference; a self-emptying, ab- 
solutely disinterested regard for its object," 

"How do you know God's love is without self- 
reference, — that it is self-emptying, pure ? " 

" Because in the last analysis I find I have a degree 
of it in myself ; and so far as I surrender myself to 
it I find the beatitude of my being. In all exercise 
of it I find not only the perfection of my happiness, 
but that all that is within me is moral harmony and 
peace, and that the beauty of Nature is understood. 
If all exercised it, I see that social existence would 
be an image of God manifest in divine beauty, in cor- 
respondence with, but yet transcending, the beauty 
of the universe. And, finally, because it explains 
Jesus Christ as a historical fact." 

"Suppose Jesus Christ were not known to you, 
could you worship God as you now do ? " 

" That I have not a right to say. I understand 
the lot of humanity only by viewing it in the light 
of Jesus Christ's love, which is a pure love like God's, 
self-emptying, knowing only the good of its object. 
I understand Jesus Christ's cross only by the light 
of God's pure love. But I will say that if I had not 
within me this principle of pure love without self- 
reference, Jesus Christ could not have enabled or 
compelled me to worship God as I do." 

" Pure love, then, is the law of the pure soul ? " 

" Yes ; its spontaneity." 



376 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



" So far as you exercise pure love, you see and 
worship God ? " 

" Unless I could exercise pure love I could not see 
God." 

"The agency of Jesus Christ is secondary, then, 
in your worship ? " 

" Spiritually speaking, yes ; but in the order of 
time I understood Jesus Christ first, — that is, his 
pure love, seen by my human understanding and 
heart, discovered to me this inmost glory of the 
nature of the soul which is God's child. And he is 
a continuous aid ; my heart is encouraged, my mind 
developed, my faith preserved from the wearing effect 
of circumstance by the cheering fact that Jesus' whole 
life was the going forth of pure love to all humanity. 
And Nature witnessed that what he said of God was 
true, by prostrating herself before him." 

" Do you understand that this is a pledge that she 
will prostrate herself before us, when we rise to the 
same disinterestedness of love ? " 

He paused a moment, and then said : " It is at 
least a pledge of our immortality ; that we are, or can 
be, above Nature, as he was, in some mansion of our 
Father's house, — for he said, 1 Where I am ye shall 
be also.' " 

" What is the nature of Jesus' authority ? " 
"Moral. His pure love commands our reverence 
as soon as we really see it." 
" It is not personal, then ? " 

" With me, moral implies personal, because I un- 
derstand conscience to be personality ; which is 
not arbitrariness, but 'God working in us to will and 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



377 



to do.' It is because my moral nature witnesses 
to the divine rectitude of his commands, that Jesus 
has authority with me. Here I find the consistency 
of the words ' I and my Father are one ' with ' My 
Father is greater than I.' Moral unity swallows 
up the natural difference between the finite and in- 
finite." 

" There is, then, a standard above Jesus, as above 
you, where both are brought to the bar of divine 
judgment ? " 

"God is above all,— even Jesus. Jesus acknowl- 
edged his inferiority ; the Son knows not all that the 
Father knows : ' Of that clay and hour/ he says, look- 
ing forward to results, ' knoweth no man, neither the 
Son, but the Father only ; ' ' No man cometh unto the 
Son except the Father draweth him;' 'Unless I go 
away the comforter, which is the spirit of truth, cannot 
come unto you/ • It is by the humility of these utter- 
ances that Jesus Christ was made divine wisdom and 
salvation to men ; that is, communicated them to us.' , 

"Let us go back to God. You worship God be- 
cause he is absolute, disinterested love. Disinterested 
love is the moral law ? " 

"Yes." 

" You hold to your definition of religion as moral 

exercise ? " 
" Yes." 

" And of God as moral essence ? " 
"Yes; the supreme object and joy of the moral 
sentiment." 

" Then what is your difference from Mr. Emerson's 
doctrine in the sermon at Divinity Hall ? " 



378 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



" I know no difference. The moral impartiality of 
God, who is no respecter of persons, has been the 
theme of all my preaching. Have you not under- 
stood me so ? " 

I told him I had, and was very glad I had not 
been mistaken. " Do you not think," I continued, 
" that moral impartiality was what Mr. Emerson 
meant by the impersonality of God? It seems- to 
me that he makes out God to be the persona per- 
sonarum. I have heard him say that ' all souls are 
only tubes to transmit the Over-soul,' which is surely 
God." 

" What is so difficult to express precisely," said Dr. 
Channing, " must be liberally interpreted. I did not 
understand Mr. Emerson as Mr. Ware did, to deny 
the personality of God. But I do regret his use of 
the word 'personality' for 'individuality/ which is 
narrow ; while ' personality ' involves free agency in 
man, — and that surely cannot be denied to God. It 
has been the aim of all my preaching to set forth the 
personality of God as moral impartiality; and not 
only that, but the moral impartiality of Jesus Christ 
also, and of every Christian so far as he is advanced be- 
yond natural necessity. Impartiality is the measure 
of spiritual advance. Nothing is more striking than 
the moral impartiality of Jesus. He said of his own 
words, ' they are spirit and they are life.' He would 
have his disciple3 believe him ' for his works' sake ; ' 
and he succeeded so completely in fixing his disciples' 
attention upon his works that we hear nothing of his 
personal history arid circumstances from them except 
incidentally, and have no description of his personal 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANKING. 379 

appearance. The ' spirit and life ' of his words and 
works alone absorb their attention, and are communi- 
cated to their readers. There is only one exception, 
and this is so striking as to amount to an irresist- 
ible internal evidence of the veracity of their nar- 
ratives. Jesus must have had a remarkable eye, 
which would necessarily make a vivid and powerful 
impression. Have you never observed how often 
the Gospel writers say, ' Jesus looked ' ? He 'looked 1 
upon the man with the withered hand, etc. What- 
ever he did or said, they never fail to tell us he 
looked" 

When speaking of Mr. Ware's sermon on the " Per- 
sonality of God," as an answer to Mr. Emerson, Dr. 
Channing said : " He is fighting with a shadow, 
for Mr. Emerson expressly says, and makes a great 
point of it, that God is alive not dead, and would 
have the Gospel narrative left to make its own im- 
pression of an indwelling life, like the growing 
grass." 

" Why did you say then, to Mr. , that, as Mr. 

Emerson did not preach Christianity, it was not hon- 
orable for him to make the address at Divinity Hall ? " 

"I never said that Mr. Emerson did not preach 
Christianity. But I see how I was, perhaps, inno- 
cently misrepresented by Mr. — 1 — , who is a personal 
friend of Mr. Emerson, and who told me explicitly 
that Mr. Emerson does not believe the New Testa- 
ment to be a veracious narrative of historical facts ; 
on which, perhaps, I said, if that was so, since the Di- 
vinity School was founded expressly to promulgate, 
explain, and preach the New Testament, the gentle- 



380 REMINISCENCES OF DPv. CHANNING. 



men of the Faculty might have thought that it would 
have been more courteous for Mr. Emerson to have 
taken some other place and occasion to give utterance 
to his individual opinions. But what I said was 
hypothetical. I pronounced no judgment on Mr. 
Emerson." 

I said, " I think Mr. Emerson did not believe he 
was contradicting what Jesus preached in his day, 
when he separated the eternal truth from the tradi- 
tion, which falsified the revelation of the Spirit to 
the Hebrews. I have heard him say that the only 
way to preach Christ to this generation is to say 
nothing about him personally, so completely has tra- 
dition buried in its own misapprehensions the words 
and deeds that in the Gospel narrative seem to have 
grown out of Nature's heart." 

" But he is bound to take the utmost care not to 
bury his own meaning in ambiguous expressions. It 
is a social duty to utter truths, — especially new or 
loh<x misunderstood truths, — in such a manner that 
all earnest minds can catch the meaning." 

" Would you, then, have him defend himself against 
such attacks as have been made on all sides ? " — and 
I particularized. 

"By no means. Let him concede nothing to per- 
sonal attacks. But he can easily find or make occa- 
sion to express clearly whether by ' impersonality * 
he means ' moral impartiality,' — which is no more 
absence of being in God than it is in the man who 
attains to it so far as to be true to the highest within 
his consciousness. The recorded history of Jesus 
may be true, and yet every soul be finally dependent 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



381 



on its own intuition for the conscience of God and 
duty. Is not intuition the free act of the mind ? 
But if Mr. Emerson does not do this, — or from some 
intellectual defect cannot do it, — still he is a great 
moral, and I am glad to think also profoundly Chris- 
tian, teacher, who deserves our respect by his whole 
life ; and you know I have not the slightest respect 
for the common abuse of him by those who have not 
a tittle of the moral earnestness which makes him a 
most powerful person." 

I said I was visiting at Mr. Emerson's when he 
was correcting the proof-sheets of his Address. He 
came to us one day and read the paragraph which 
begins, " But by this Eastern monarchy of a Chris- 
tianity," etc., and said, " How does that strike your 
Hebrew souls ? " I replied, " I like it ; but put a 
large F to designate Jesus as the " Friend of souls ! " 
He reflected a moment, and then said, " No ; directly. 
I put that large F they all go to sleep ! " 

Dr. Channing smiled and said, " There are diverse 
gifts and diverse ways of presenting the truth. Mr. 
Emerson seems to be gifted to speak to an audience 
which is not addressed by any of the rest of us. In 
general, men are governed by their affections ; and 
the preacher whose audience stretches from zenith 
to nadir must touch the affections of the multitude. 
But pure love is an idea ; and to purify men's love of 
Jesus it may be in some instances desirable not to 
think of his individuality. Perhaps Jesus meant to 
express this when he said to his personal disciples, 
' It is expedient that I go away from you. Unless I 
go away, the Comforter, which is the Spirit of truth, 



382 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



cannot come.' St. Paul never saw Jesus in the flesh, 
— knew him only in the spirit ; but how strong is 
his faith in the personality of Christ ! Not less 
strong than the faith of St. John, who rejoiced in 
having seen and handled the Word made fleshy 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



TF it would not make this book too voluminous, I 
should give a whole chapter to the relations of 
Dr. Channing and Horace Mann, who were identical 
in their conviction that human life on earth is all for 
education. Their mutual personal acquaintance did 
not begin till 1833. But for the eight previous years, 
when Mr. Mann was in the Massachusetts House of 
Representatives, Dr. Channing had watched his career 
with sympathetic attention, observing that he was en- 
tirely occupied in ameliorating penal legislation, and 
reforming, to the point of revolutionizing, the meth- 
ods of treating the insane. In the first interviews I 
witnessed between them, they agreed respecting the 
treatment of the Temperance and Antislavery ques- 
tions, which they deprecated should be complicated 
with partisan politics ; desiring rather to keep them 
in the sphere of moral suasion, because all action less 
vital must necessarily have results comparatively su- 
perficial, and produce immoral reactions. 

With regard to temperance, Mr. Mann thought the 
State should regulate the sale of liquors, on the same 
principle that it did the sale of more universally 
acknowledged poisons ; and that the stress of social 
action should be given to convincing men that they 
were poisons ; so that they should freely and intelli- 



384 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



gently practise temperance. As to slavery, Mr. Mann 
and Dr. Channing precisely agreed in the view that 
Charles Sumner afterwards tersely expressed, and to 
whose illustration he devoted himself; namely, that 
slavery was not national but sectional. They also rec- 
ognized that the North was not less guilty than the 
South, first, in having turned the scale in the Consti- 
tutional Convention with respect to the compromises ; 
and later, in extending slave soil by the Missouri 
Compromise so-called, and in clinging to the imme- 
diate profits of slavery to themselves now. Therefore 
they thought the North should do what the English 
Antislavery Society was endeavoring to make Par- 
liament do with respect to the West Indian planters ; 
namely, help the slaveholders through the immediate 
expenses of emancipation from the evil whose sinful- 
ness they shared. 

Mr. Mann, in one conversation that I heard be- 
tween him and Dr. Channing, spoke of his hopes 
from the colonization of Africa by the freed slaves, 
which he said would open the superior rice and cotton 
lands of that country, and take down the artificial price 
of cotton, which alone enabled the South to bear so ex- 
pensive a system of labor. Dr. Channing was greatly 
interested in Mr. Mann's views of the civilization of 
Africa, but he told him that Garrison was right in 
saying, that, as a measure of abolition, colonization 
was a delusion and a snare , for that so long as the 
area of slavery was undiminished, every freed slave 
only created a demand for a new slave to fill the 
place, and thus encouraged slave-breeding and smug- 
gling, which were both rife in the South. He thought 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 385 

the faithful use of moral means would prepare Con- 
gress for national action by-and-by. And thus he lure- 
cast the programme of the Tree-Soil party, in which 
Mr. Mann afterwards acted so powerfully, as may be 
seen in his volume of Antislavery addresses ; and 
whose final issues have demonstrated that it was the 
compromises and not the constitution of the United 
States which made the " union with Hell " (as the 
abolitionists phrased it), and that so long hindered 
the accomplishment of the national motto, E pluri- 
bus unum. 

I must also refer to the Memoirs of Horace Mann 
for the letter which Dr. Channing wrote to him on 
occasion of his being made Secretary of the first Board 
of Education of Massachusetts, and the memoranda 
Mr. Mann made in his diary of Dr. Channing's agree- 
ment with and support of him in the view, that, with- 
out moral education, intellectual education became a 
public calamity, — the reign of Satan instead of the 
Son of God on earth. Neither of these friends was 
ever disappointed in the other in all their inter- 
course on this great subject. 

I find I have lost a letter of Dr. Channing's that I 
received soon after my removal to Salem, in which 
he acknowledged some drawings I had sent him, 
which I had traced from Flaxraan's outlines. 1 One 
was of Justice soaring away from the wicked of the 
Iron Age and rising up before the throne of the be- 
nignant Jupiter, while Minerva sits pensively by. 
The other was of Orestes at the feet of the saddened 
Apollo, who could only temporarily, by his personal 

1 Illustrations of Hesiod and jEschylus. 
25 



386 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNINGL 

presence, put the Furies to sleep within the precincts 
of his own temple. I had said to Dr. Charming, that, 
with all my Christianity, I felt myself as much a 
prey to the Furies as the poor Orestes ; and was fain 
to repeat his prayer to Apollo to the greater God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, In his reply he 
asked me to tell him what were my difficulties re- 
specting providence, and to write out elaborately the 
problems of life I could the least solve. My letter 
(which was full of sympathy for Mr. Sullivan, who 
had buried his wife and all his lovely daughters, and 
for the terrible bereavements of Mrs. Follen and Mr. 
Mann) may be sufficiently divined from his reply : 

Bostox, December, 1836. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I almost reproach myself 
for not having written you immediately on receiving your 
last ; and nothing would have prevented it if I could have 
hoped that a word of mine would clo you good. But I 
was suffering from an indisposition which took from me 
my usual energy ; and a work of some importance weighed 
on my mind and impelled me to efforts in another direc- 
tion, which however have resulted in little. 

I did not feel that I misunderstood you ; but, as far as 
I could comprehend your case, I believed that relief must 
come chiefly from within, not from without. I know what 
sickness of heart is, but not such as yours.; .for I have less 
tenderness of nature, and have leaned less on those around 
me • have lived perhaps too much in thought, too little in 
the affections. I am not then the person to speak best to 
your suffering nature ; I have not felt and conquered all 
your trials. Still, we have all one heart, and all have a 
key to others' anguish, and may sometimes soothe by a 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 387 



tone of sympathy, where we can do little good by a word 
of wisdom. 

In reading your letter, I felt immediately that we viewed 
life from very different positions. Your remarks about the 
Sullivan family show how exclusively you look on things 
with the eyes of affection. I see no perplexity where you 
see " desolation," — that terrible word, to me perhaps the 
most ominous in the vocabulary of woe ! To me, such 
people are the very people to die. That such a family has 
lived makes me thankful to God ; for I see in them the 
glory and immortal destiny of human nature : they throw 
their own light over their race. And I rejoice too in their 
death ; for how natural is it that the heavenly should as- 
cend to the heavenly, and what a link do such form be- 
tween the present and the future worlds ! As to the sur- 
viving relatives, they suffer deeply ; but what a mysterious 
union is there of hope and joy with the deepest sufferings 
of truly virtuous friendship ! Unhappily friendship is sel- 
dom virtuous enough. It seldom clings to the divine in 
its objects as it should do. It clings more to the personal, 
outward, temporary; and it is fit that such friendship 
should be purified by suffering. Among the chief goods 
which God gives us is the living image within us of a vir- 
tuous friend translated to a better world. I can never 
cease to thank God for having known such a friend, and 
for having the treasure of his spiritual presence in my 
memory. You seem to be impressed with nothing in life 
more than with the tortures of wounded affection, and speak 
of tenderness of heart as " punished." The fault in such 
cases is in the affections. They are, to use your own lan- 
guage, "passions which form no part of God's nature." 
The true affection is that which rests primarily on the 
divi?ie, the universal, the disinterested, the unbounded, in 
our fellow-creatures. The affections of nature are low, 



388 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



until enlightened and sanctified by some glimpse of the 
Godlike and the eternal in their objects. It is this infu- 
sion of the moral principle into all our affections which 
makes them worthy of us ; and we find in it a healing, 
strengthening, sustaining power in severest suffering. In 
most people, the balance is on the side of the feeling, not 
of the heavenly principle. Hence so much suffering ! 
Hence it is good that friends are taken. This dispensa- 
tion brings out to us the spiritual in them, and purifies 
our love for them, and blends with it an all-conquering 
faith. Such affection is the perfection of beauty ; and ac- 
cordingly I believe that suffering, instead of extinguishing 
the beauty of the soul, lends it new grace. The beauty 
which has most touched my heart in life has not been that 
which has shone out radiantly in youth and prosperity, 
but that which has revealed itself unconsciously, with a 
mild, dewy light, in sore trial. 

These remarks are enough to show our different modes 
of vision. As to " destiny," we are all conscious of two 
orders of events or movements, — one outward, necessary, 
or very little in our power ; the other inward, and not 
necessary, in which our being most properly consists. Life 
is made up of necessary and free forces, and it is a great 
question which of these prevails in our history. Under 
the outward I include friends. These sometimes steal from 
us our freedom : and this influence may explain to us a 
part of our needed discipline. It is a superficial philoso- 
phy which dismisses this subject with saying "man rows, 
but destiny steers." The question is, whether oiir routing 
springs from destiny ; whether this be fate-bound or free % 
If the latter, then the faithful rower wins the race of life, 
no matter how steered. 

You think that life may be determined by " something 
in the Divine mind, of which there is no germ or signature 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



389 



in the human breast." I am accustomed to believe that 
God has revealed to us, in the moral nature, the ultimate, 
the end, the supreme good, the great interpretation of the 
universe. It seems to me one of the intuitions of the 
moral nature that there is nothing greater than rectitude, 
disinterestedness, pure love, truth, and wisdom. If there 
be, it must be harmonious with these. I believe, however, 
that we know the best from the beginning, and this it is 
which constitutes the unity of our eternal being. With 
this conviction, I have no fear that my affections are to 
become instruments of torture. 

I acknowledge that my key to the universe does not 
unlock thousands of its mysteries ; I am awed, sometimes 
almost overwhelmed, by the strength of moral evil, and by 
the seeming failure of all the discipline of life. But I feel 
my own profound ignorance of the soul. I know but the 
surface of this wonderful nature, of freedom, of virtue. 
The mysterious in life is working far deeper than I have 
penetrated. It is indeed sometimes hard to hold fast my 
faith in the divine in human nature. Vice, poverty, filth, 
ignorance, woe, — these are indeed strange habiliments of 
a son of God ; but I do catch a glimpse, at least, of God in 
his fallen child ; and with this faith I can bear the burden 
of the infinite mystery. 

I have said now what I have often said before, and might 
add much more ; but I am too tired, and may tire you. 

You wish me to write on different subjects, and think 
that others may write about society. This remark shows 
that I have not succeeded or done much for my end. 
That end has been to bring down the Highest to the ap- 
prehension of the lowly ; to show how the divine might 
mingle with and be brought out in common life, and in 
every condition. Many cannot do this. . . . 

Your sincere friend, W. E. Channing. 



390 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



The last paragraph of his letter refers to my having 
said in mine, that, when I first knew him, and he was 
thinking and preaching about the forms and princi- 
ples of the spiritual life in individuals, I felt more 
interest personally in his preaching than now that he 
was so exclusively occupied in social subjects, or the 
application of principles to society, etc. I hoped, I 
said, he would soon get through with that, and return 
to the first kind of sermons, — the topics of which re- 
quired, I thought, such an advanced and experienced 
Christian as himself to treat ; while some other peo- 
ple, perhaps, might superintend applications of princi- 
ples to society at large. 

To the above letter was added a postscript, saying : 
" I send you a small check for your own comforts and 
your brother's. After my explanations, you must know 
that unless this small expression of my interest was 
perfectly convenient I should not send it." I insert 
this apparently personal matter to me, because I wish 
to explain many things of the like kind in his letters, 
which grew out of a change that had taken place in 
my pecuniary affairs. In order, therefore, to make 
intelligible the letters and extracts from his corre- 
spondence while I was in Salem, I must again be so 
egotistical as to tell of my personal circumstances. 

The pressure of various duties and sympathies with 
several suffering friends so depressed me in 1831, that 
I felt it a duty to my pupils to drop my school for 
six months' rest, my mind being in too morbid a state 
for me to do my duty to them. My sister, mean- 
while, went to Ehode Island, and was governess in 
Dr. Channing's family during the summer. At this 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 391 



time my parents, — who had come to Boston from 
Salem, in 1828, to give us a home for ourselves and 
school, — returned to Salem, where my father's busi- 
ness had always required him to be every alternate 
week; so that when the vacation was over we re- 
sumed our school in the boarding-house of Mrs. Clarke 
(Dr. J. F. Clarke's mother). But in 1833 our school 
was again dropped to enable my sister Mary to go to 
the West Indies for two years, with my invalid sister 
Sophia. While she was gone I had classes in history 
and literature, and also gave my services in Mr. Al- 
cott's school ; wrote the " Record of a School," and by 
the loss by fire of the bulk of the edition, and of the 
just-printed edition of my translation of De Gerando's 
** Visitor of the Poor," I was plunged into pecuniary 
difficulties ; so that after a vain attempt to collect a 
new school, — our old one having grown up beyond 
us, — first my sister arid then I myself went to Salem. 
There new trials awaited us, of sickness in the family, 
and deaths, and poverty, — though I gained a fitful in- 
come by my classes of adults in literature and history, 
and my sister kept a school for little children, which 
was almost a kindergarten,/^ at the date when Fred- 
ericJFroebel, in Saxony, was founding the first Kind- 
ergarten, as he felicitously named it. 

Dr. Channing's first expression of sympathy in my 
altered circumstances was evinced by the following 
letters, which I received soon after my arrival in 
Salem : — 



392 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



Newport, July 30, 1835. 
My dear Miss Peabody, — I have just preached a ser- 
mon at the dedication in Newport, which I intend to pub- 
lish. Can you make it profitable to yourself] If so, it is 
at your service. I shall expect that your copyright will 
not interfere with my using the discourse as I may think 
most useful. I may wish, for example, to insert it in a 
volume, or to make it a tract. If you can be benefited, I 
shall have the pleasure of thinking that at least one person 
is the better for my labors. Write me immediately. If 
you engage with a publisher, he can perhaps suggest some 
way of sending the discourse more expeditiously than by 
the wagon. Tell me how it shall reach you. 

Very sincerely your friend, 

W. E. Channing. 



Boston, October, 1836. 
My dear Miss Peabody, — Mr. Phillips was to see 
me this week, and I spoke to him of what I understood to 
be your narrow circumstances, in the present state of your 
family. The next day he sent me the enclosed note of 
fifty dollars to be forwarded to you. He suggested send- 
ing it without giving any name, but I believed the knowl- 
edge of his name would make the gift more acceptable. 
It was my intention and hope to make an addition, but I 
must leave to another the privilege which I should be glad 
to monopolize. From what you write me, I fear your 
present labors, however useful they may be to other minds, 
will not do much for your present need. The origin of 
evil (or of the present condition of human nature) is a great 
subject, and whoever is called to it by an inward impulse 
ought to strive to penetrate it. I have no despair of the 
profoundest problems. I only ask that their profoundness 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 393 

be recognized. Men should not unsettle others' faith, ar- 
rogate discoveries, etc., when they hardly comprehend the 
problem to be solved. You will bring to it a full sense of 
the mystery. All I wanted to ask was, if you cannot at 
the same time prepare some work which may meet a gen- 
eral want. Your sister Mary spoke of some exercises on 
literature which you had prepared for your class. I forget 
whether you have expressed to me any purpose of publish- 
ing these, though I have some vague notion of the matter. 
I introduce the topic only to ask whether, if you publish, 
you cannot consistently with what you owe to your own 
mind abstain from speculations and modes of expression 
so remote from the common track as to seem to many 
unintelligible or dark ] Your review of Mr. Emerson in 
" The Democrat " would be a bad model for a book which 
seeks general circulation. A work on literature, bringing 
out the spirit and characteristics of great writers, and 
helping the young to read and comprehend them, would 
be a valuable accession to our means of education. I 
should think the want of such a book must be felt. God 
give you strength under your trials, and teach you so to 
view and use them that they shall minister to the inward 
life ! 

Very truly, your friend, 

W. E. Channing. 



Newport, September 1, 1837. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I thank you for your 
long letter, — not too long ; that cannot be. You always 
lay me under obligation by writing, — first, by giving me 
a great deal of pleasure, and next, by not binding me to 
give an answer. The pleasure of getting a letter is in my 
case not a little diminished by the consciousness it brings 



394 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



that I must reply. I write a letter with as much pleasure 
as anything else, if I may wait till the spirit moves me ; 
but I like compulsion as little as Sir John. You owe this 
letter to my having heard from Boston that my pulpit may 
need a new supply this winter, and I want to ask you a 
question. Would Mr. Hedge like to supply my pulpit 
for six or eight months ? Your account of him has inter- 
ested me greatly. I want him to come to a milder climate 
and more congenial society • and perhaps so long an en- 
gagement in Boston would give him time to look round 
and find the right sphere. I wish nothing said abroad about 
it yet, however, because if Mr. Ellis stays in the country 
I presume he will be engaged, and because I am not sure 
how our congregation would appreciate Mr. Hedge. On 
this point I should like your judgment. To me the ar- 
rangement would be very agreeable. I should delight in 
opportunities of intercourse with your friend, and of fur- 
thering any of his projects. I hope, whatever he does, he 
will not desert the pulpit. Another reason for saying 
nothing is that his people should be spared unnecessary 
agitation about their minister. 

Your account of Mr. Woods did not at all surprise me. 
The old theology is essentially conservative, and accord- 
ingly all the old sects in the country have that leaning. 
Conservatism is only one form of distrust of human na- 
ture, and is the natural growth of the doctrine of total 
depravity. " Man can only be carried forward by a foreign 
force. We can be restrained only by force. There is 
nothing in him you can rely on ; his acquisitions are acci- 
dents, not natural developments, and the true wisdom is 
not to hazard them by seeking more. The individual can- 
not be trusted to mark out his way. He must walk in the 
highway marked out by authority. " Such are the saws of 
conservatism, and the old theology adopts them all. The 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



395 



viciousness of this system is that the arguments which 
drive us to authority leave this authority without founda- 
tion ; for how can you trust the ruler more than the ruled 1 
Is not human depravity as inveterate, human nature as 
vile, in the former as the latter ? The true inference would 
be that angels must come down to wield this so needed 
authority. Until they do come, I can trust the many as 
well as the few. Can the true spirit of humanity dwell 
in connection with this conservatism % You can have the- 
ological love of men such as abounded in the Church of 
Rome \ can you have the true, revering, tender, human 
love of your race % 

I grieve to hear what you say of Mr. Brownson. I 
did hope that the study of great truths, universal princi- 
ples, would give calmness and stability to his mind ; and 
so they would, were it not for an unhappy organization. 
This is chiefly in fault. I have still great interest in him. 
I comprehend how to such a man the present social state 
should be full of deformity. I prefer his morbidly sen- 
sitive vision on these points to the stone-blindness of 
multitudes who condemn him. But how sad that a man 
capable of doing so much good should throw away all his 
opportunities ! 

How could you stain your page by the abuse of Miss 
Martineau, which you reported 1 Is it possible that this 
could make you shrink or grieve for the sake of your sex 1 
I was sorry to find you sensitive to what such gentlemen 
say. I differ almost wholly from Miss Martineau's views 
as to the destination of woman. Woman's true power is 
moral power, — an infinitely higher empire than political. 
But how little does she understand her empire ! She is 
like an infant heir of royalty, unconscious of what she 
was born to. I suspect, too, that should she assert her 
true prerogative, she would find as little favor with gentle- 



396 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



men as if she were to turn politician or soldier. ~No hu- 
man "being, man or woman, can act up to a sublime stand- 
ard without giving offence. It would be very "unladylike/' 
I suspect, to be uncompromisingly faithful to high prin- 
ciples ! I see the need of great reform in women as well 
as in men ; but Miss Martineau, with all her heroism, will 
do little to forward it. I am amazed to see how my pen 
has run on. 

Very sincerely your friend, 

W. E. Channing. 



Boston, November 21, 1837. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I reproach myself for not 
having answered your letter in which you communicated 
your domestic affliction. I did not feel, however, as if you 
needed a reply. I saw that you had been your own com- 
forter, and had taken views of the bereavement probably 
more sustaining than any I could have given. The event 
in your brother's history which induced you to write 
me had wholly escaped my memory, and was not easily 
recalled even after your suggestion; the later and more 
cheering views you have given of his character and progress 
had taken its place. Death is never more affecting than 
at that age of promise and hope, and how inexplicable it 
would be without the connection which religion establishes 
between this and the future life ! Do express my sympa- 
thy to your father, mother, and sisters. 

It has been reported that I was so wanting in virtue 
and generosity as to employ you when you were in abso- 
lute want, to copy my sermons for me, and allowed you 
nothing for your pains. Such a report I do not contra- 
dict, and I have not the slightest disposition to hold you 
at all responsible for it ; but is it not possible that you 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



397 



talked confusedly of your circumstances and of your copy- 
ing for me, so that some one's stupidity misconstrued your 
language into an imputation on my honor 1 These things 
little move me as you well know, and I beg you to feel no 
distress about the matter. I may not remember it long 
enough to make it a matter of conversation when we meet. 
But cannot you avoid talking about me 1 I wish simply 
to advise you to greater caution in your communications 
about your friends. It has always been a matter of sur- 
prise to me that one who lives among general truths as 
much as you do should be so much inclined to talk about 
details. 

Your candor will interpret these remarks aright. I 
do not censure, nor would I give pain. I refer to what 
is unpleasant in the past only for the benefit of the fu- 
ture. I wish that what you say may have more authority 
by being spoken more considerately and precisely. Mrs. 
Channing and Mary would send regards were they on the 
spot. 

Very sincerely, your friend, 

W. E. Channing. 

Some correspondence necessarily took place with 
respect to the report to which he referred in the fore- 
going letter. I told him it was simply impossible to 
avoid speaking of him, for personal character was the 
staple of New England conversation ; the majority of 
people were incapable of talking on general subjects, 
their whole sensibilities being alive about persons, 
and especially distinguished persons. I told him of 
some analyses I had heard made of him, and of some 
interpretations of his conduct in some particulars ; 
and how I answered them from my more advantage- 
ous point of observation, taking the good opportunity 



398 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIXG. 



to express my sense of respect, gratitude, and personal 
obligation. He replied in a letter beginning, " Evil 
rumors cannot move me to speak ; but confidence and 
affection, such as yours, overcome my propensity to be 
silent about myself.'' Then follows an account of his 
relations to several persons, involving revelations in 
regard to the conduct of his own life which he for- 
bade me to repeat to anybody, but which were most 
interesting, though not necessary, to me; for I had 
divined that in him ont of which they came. I feel 
justified however in giving a few paragraphs from 
this and subsequent letters, that I copied before 
destroying the otknnals : — 

When I saw how little way wise men could penetrate 
into another's soul, I was tempted to look on the study of 
character in despair. What surprised me in the criticisms 
on myself was the want of depth, subtilty, and refinement. 
Your suggestion of an intellectual defect was correct so far 
as it went [this was that he did not quickly catch the 
idiosyncracies of character] ; but the chief explanation does 
not lie in that direction. Miss Martineau was not so much 
to blame. I find by her letter to me that there is a very 
strong and wide impression of my personal meanness in 
the expenditure of money. There is indeed no point of 
character in which I should not sooner have expected an 
attack. . . . Money has always seemed to me what it is; 
and so little value have I attached to it, that I cannot as- 
scribe to myself any merit or virtue for giving it away. 
My principle is to spend my whole income, without reserv- 
ing anything. For me to accumulate would be morally 
wrong. At the same time I inflexibly keep myself within 
my income . . . 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 399 

But it is useful to me to know what has been said. I 
learn from it how very little worth there is in the general 
impressions which pervade society respecting people's faults. 
These are always exaggerated. I cannot compliment the 
world for its candor towards me in some particulars ; 
but it has been most generous towards my intellectual 
powers, — far too generous for the truth ; and in regard to 
my morals, I cannot but think that, on the whole, I pass 
better than I deserve with the multitude, while there are 
friends whose esteem deeply humbles me by its excess. I 
do not believe I have an enemy in the world. That I am 
not and cannot be popular is very plain ; and I truly regret 
it, because it is a sign of moral defect. When some call 
my humanity speculative and poetical, an inward voice 
asks me if there is not truth in this ] And so deep is my 
consciousness of my falling in life below the love which I ad- 
mire and adore in Jesus Christ, that I have little disposition 
to repel the world's suspicions. There is but one view in 
which bad rumors trouble me : they take from the power of 
my preaching. This is severe punishment of the evil with- 
in me, — that it disarms in a measure my testimony to the 
truth. But I am not disheartened \ a new purpose arises 
within me to struggle with my evil. How shall I bless 
God if, through the reproaches of my fellow-creatures, He 
leads me to a higher virtue! That I am misapprehended, 
suspected, blamed, all this I understand, — who is not 1 
but I cannot think of a human bein^ who harbors revenue 
or malignity towards me. 

It was a proof of his want of perception of the 
idiosyncrasy of the individual to whom I trace the 
origin of all this slander, — and who, as Miss Mar- 
tineau said, was her informant, — that he did not 
think of him as harboring "revenge or malignity ;" 



400 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 



for he told me of something he said to him on one 
occasion, that the man's own conscience made a severe 
reproach. In short, he had wounded his self-love be- 
cause he did not see that self-love and vanity in him 
were stronger than his love of duty or truth. 

I must give two sentences more which are char- 
acteristic : — 

That others should trouble themselves about me is a 
mystery. My natural state is an unconsciousness of being 
observed; and I start up with something like surprise 
when I find others busy about me. I cannot claim the 
merit of forgiving injuries. I forget them ... If we 
absorb ourselves in great subjects, live in the region of 
ideas, men's opinions will trouble us very little. 

During the four years that I was in Salem I copied 
all the things he published, which necessarily in- 
volved a good deal of correspondence on the subjects, 
as he always wanted me to " make remarks and sug- 
gestions freely," and always thanked me for them 
expressly, and adopted my suggestions in every single 
instance. But I will give only one of these letters, 
and that because I want to say that the article on 
" Creeds " in the second volume of his complete Works 
is an extract from the letter referred to. I had hoped, 
indeed, to insert another letter written this same year, 
— perhaps the most interesting one that I ever received 
from him. It came on occasion of my brother George's 
death. But after Dr. Channing's death I sent it to Mrs. 
Channing to read, who wanted never to part with it. 
Her daughter promised that I should have it when 
her mother died, but apparently it has been lost. If 
it should be found, I will put it in the Appendix. 



KEMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANN1NG. 401 

Boston, Jan. 14, 1839. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — In the beginning of this 
week I received a letter from a minister of the society of 
Christians, — who edits a paper with six thousand sub- 
scribers, and spreads over all the country, — requesting me 
to furnish him a letter, which he says will be read every- 
where with interest. I set to work, and, hardly allowing 
myself time for thought, produced the enclosed letter. It 
is written, I fear, illegibly, but I have no time or strength 
to copy it. Will you try to furnish me a copy, very plain ] 
If it is a desperate case, send me back the manuscript. I 
wanted first to give good counsel, and next to give an ex- 
pression of the interest which I deeply feel in the poorer 
class of Christians. I send you my letter to Mr. Eirney 
with additions. In haste, and very faithfully 
Your friend, 

W. E. Chaining. 

P. S. Make any remarks. 



26 



CHAPTER XXV. 



TN" the winter of 1838-39 I went to Boston once a 
week to attend Margaret Fuller's Conversations 
in tlie morning and Mr. Emerson's Lectures in the 
evening, and always went to dine with Dr. Charming. 
Generally we talked at and after dinner about the 
conversations and the lectures. He was greatly in- 
terested in both. But in my crowded life I found no 
time to journalize much of this in addition to the 
notes I made of Mr. Emerson and Margaret. What 
Dr. Charming said was so much what I thought my- 
self, that I could not write it down. 

Under the forms of Apollo, Minerva, Venus, Bac- 
chus, and Vulcan, Margaret discoursed of genius, 
wisdom, beauty, nature, and art. On the Minerva- 
day, when genius and wisdom were compared, I find 
I did record that Dr. Channing said : " Wisdom is, 
firstly, the insight and apprehension of the highest 
good of man, the supreme end of the human being. 
This is a direct idea, — the ideal wisdom. Secondly, 
wisdom is the appreciation and use of all circum- 
stances that bear upon ideal truth, all that is neces- 
sary to bring it out into our actual lives. Wisdom is 
nothing if it is not practical. But this idea of the 
highest good is not in proportion to the genius of a 
man, but in proportion to his fidelity to conscience. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



403 



It is moral, — the free act of our personality. We 
often see it in those who are unable to perceive 
clearly the symbolical meaning of Nature, and ut- 
terly incapable of representing it. For to have the 
power to represent what we certainly know is the 
special prerogative of genius. 

" Genius has a kind of moral indifferency. It even 
delights in evil, because evil admits of so vivid a re- 
presentation. The best men. have excelled in their 
delineations of evil rather than of good : witness the 
Pandemonium of Milton and Dante's Inferno. To 
embody good in vivid forms has never been done so 
as to satisfy us. Genius sees the natural forms of 
ideas. Give it a passion, and it will give us back the 
pure and perfect operation of this passion, and that in 
Nature which symbolizes and represents it." 

Dr. Channing had become acquainted with Marga- 
ret Fuller after I left Boston, when his daughter had 
read German literature with her. He had great re- 
spect not only for her talents, but for the noble virtues 
she had displayed in her action in her own family ; the 
dignity, spirit, and magnanimity with which she had 
borne at the time of her father's death the disap- 
pointment of her most cherished plans in life, which 
she sacrificed to the general family interest. He also 
knew how to reverence the fortitude with which she 
bore the access and paroxysms of a distressing disease 
of the spine, that would have given to the conscience 
of most persons an absolution from all exertion for 
others. 

The plan of Margaret's Conversations was partly 
Dr. Channing's, and he took great interest in every 



404 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNIXG. 

one of them, and also in their general success. He 
was very serene with respect to the misunderstand- 
ings and ugly things said of them, and thought it 
should all be ignored by Margaret and her friends, — 
as, indeed, it was. 

Margaret's Conversations were full of interest to 
me also. I had been studying Greece for several 
years in its historians, poets, and philosophers. Mar- 
garet started from the arts, which she rightly consid- 
ered as the fullest expression of the Grecian life and 
the final cause of the Greek mythology. I think no 
one attended that course, and the one of the next 
winter, — when the arts themselves, both Greek and 
modern, were the subject, — who did not pronounce 
her initial statements and occasional bursts of elo- 
quence the most splendid exhibitions of conversa- 
tional talent, not only that they ever heard, but that 
they ever heard of, or % read of. This, however, is no 
place to speak of them. I only wish to record that 
Dr. Channing was one who knew how to appreciate 
her, and never lost an opportunity to express his 
respect, which I never heard him qualify by any 
remark. And I have every reason to believe he 
would have spoken frankly to me in our frequent 
conversations, had he had anything to say ; nor did I 
ever hear him suggest an excuse for any one who 
was hard upon her. Her object of making women 
set themselves seriously to cultivate their minds by 
literature, the fine arts, and an independent view of 
their duties in life, was very dear to him. He ex- 
pressed regret that the subject of the next winter's 
Conversations was the " Eelations and Duties of Social 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



405 



Life;" because, as he said, Margaret was so excep- 
tionally qualified for literary and artistic themes that 
it was a pity she should not be taken advantage of 
purely for them. He doubted if she knew so much 
of Christianity as of art. But it was impossible to 
stem the torrent of the times, which set so strongly 
to ethical subjects, and tended to view everything in 
the theosophic light. 

I now must say something in relation to Dr. Chan- 
ning's views of George Ripley's Community scheme. 
The movement given to Mr. Ripley's mind by being de- 
nounced by Mr. Norton made perceptible the great di- 
vision of the Unitarians which had long been growing. 
The movement party, with Eipley, Parker, Brownson, 
etc., went one way, and Mr. Norton led a troop the 
other. Very soon Mr. Ripley came to doubt all the 
present church modes of administering Christianity. 
He thought the mercantile spirit of the country 
dominated even the religious corporations, and that 
the search after and utterance of truth were made 
secondary matters to the pecuniary condition of those 
buildings called churches ; and that another form of 
religious societies, more spontaneous, uncomplicated 
with pecuniary interests, should replace our churches. 

Dr. Channing had for years criticised all ecclesias- 
ticisms, and often suggested (as in his " Review of 
Milton," in 1826) a more social mode of communi- 
cating thought between Christians than the pulpit ; 
and in 1835 had been very much interested in Dr. 
Follen's plan of the Church at Lexington, whicli was 
to have been for half the Sunday a conference meet- 
ing. He now expressed his regret that Mr. Ripley 



406 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. ' 

wished to abandon the Purchase-street Society rather 
than to use his influence with his people, and employ 
his great conversational powers in changing his pulpit 
exercises for such a conference meeting. But very 
soon Mr. Eipley went from criticising the religious 
organization to criticising the social organization, and 
to proposing to organize society anew on the principle 
of co-operation instead of competition of interests ; 
making agriculture the foundation, but paying all 
labor the same wages by the hour, — the more intel- 
lectual and artistic work involving so much reward 
in itself. Such a heroic treatment of evil never had 
occurred to me, but I found it had occurred to Dr. 
Channing, and that he agreed with Mr. Eipley in the 
important proposition that it was entirely impossible 
to live under our civilization without being an invol- 
untary party to great social wrong all the time. He 
instanced the case of the hackmen, who live on the 
coach-box. He said he one day complained to Niles, 
the livery-stable keeper, because he had sent him a 
coachman who did not know places about town. 
Niles replied that he had selected that coachman for 
him, because he was raw from the country, and had 
not had time to get into the dissipated habits uni- 
formly acquired by hackmen. 

Division of labor, he said, was good for the acqui- 
sition of national wealth, but sacrificed the individ- 
uals composing the nation. When reading Carlyle's 
" Past and Present," I was continually reminded of 
what Dr. Channing used to say on this subject. 

Dr. Channing therefore looked upon Mr. Eipley's 
plans with interest and favor, although he had a 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 407 

thousand doubts about its immediate success. The 
year before, when Mr. Phillips was living at the Tre- 
mont House, there had been a meeting in his parlor, 
playfully named the " Club of the Jacobins," which 
was frequented by George Ripley, John S. D wight, 
Theodore Parker, and other critics of the times, who 
talked of social reforms ; and these meetings greatly 
interested Dr. Channing. I returned to Boston in 
the midst of all this movement, of which I realized 
nothing while I was in Salern ; especially because my 
attention had been turned quite another way by Mr. 
Emerson, since 1833. 

By a curious coincidence, at this moment, when 
commerce seemed about to be reformed out, I had 
come to Boston on my first commercial enterprise, 
to which some collateral circumstances conspired to 
open a prospect of success in obtaining the means of 
subsistence. As usual, I informed my kind friend of 
my project. He answered thus : — • 

Saratoga Springs, June 7, 1840. 

My dear Miss Reabody, — Your letter, not finding me 
at Newport, reached me here. I must give you a brief 
answer, for I am not able to use my hand much. I am 
truly gratified by the freedom with which you consult me 
as a friend. During my long acquaintance with you, I 
have felt an increasing interest in your happiness. I have 
honored you for the noble spirit with which you have 
passed through sore and peculiar trials. I have not looked 
with indifference on your enduring trust in God and the 
human soul. 

As to your present project I can give you no counsel, for 
I do not know what your capacity for business is, or what 



408 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



gifts the work may require. You can judge of books ; but 
bookselling, like all business, requires a knowledge of the 
world, of whom you can trust, etc. There is only one 
point on which I can speak confidently. I see nothing 
in the business inconsistent with your sex. I have a great 
desire to see a variety of employments thrown open to 
women, and if they may sell anything, why not books ? 
The business seems to partake of the dignity of literature. 
Still, it would not be wonderful if in this age of proprie- 
ties difficulties should be started which I cannot anticipate. 
I should be glad however to see the experiment made by 
a woman equal to the task. I have a distrust of your busi- 
ness talent ; and this I say not to discourage, but that you 
may seek counsel from those who know your worldly gifts 
and the demands of this business better than myself. I 
can add no more. 

Very sincerely your friend, 

W. E. Channing. 



Newport, June 22, 1840. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — T I arrived here on Saturday, 
and found your letter, and answer it at once, because I am 
unwilling that a word of mine should add the weight of a 
feather to your many burdens. I spoke of your possible 
want of business talent not to discourage you, but to pre- 
vent you from entering on the enterprise without examin- 
ing into your fitness for it, and asking counsel from such 
as you may confide in. My fear on this subject came from 
the impression which was quite common in your school- 
keeping days, that you want order, method, arrangement. 
If I mistake not, you had a notion that in regard to order, 
as in everything else, what we need is the spirit rather than 
the letter ; that rules and machinery are worth little ; that 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 409 



the principle within us will meet intuitively the wants of 
the moment. Now, however well-founded your theory 
may be in general, I am satisfied that it will not apply to 
business. In this, everything must have its time and 
place ; engagements must be met at the very moment ; 
strict rules must be laid down ; people must know where 
to find you, and what to expect, etc. You must be a 
machine, so far as this consists in going through a set 
of regular movements. 

I have told you what I feared. Were your business to ' 
be more independent, I should also fear from the ascend- 
ancy of your imagination. Our country is a land of 
" golden " dreams, and you might give in to these, were 
you to set up for yourself; but in your character of agent 
you would not be much tempted. The only objection I 
have to a circulating library is the corrupt taste of read- 
ers, who often want books which one would not like to 
circulate. But you can make your selection. I will ex- 
press no fear for you. In truth, I have hopes. You have 
many friends, and I should think a book-store kept by a 
lady would become a favored resort of your sex. The 
ladies want a literary lounge, and good might come from 
the literary intercourse that would spring out of such a 
place of meeting. 

Your sincere friend, 

W. E. Channing. 

To aid me in my proposed business, after I had 
made all my preparations for removing to Boston, Dr. 
Channing wrote me another letter, from which I will 
make an extract to show how thoughtful he was for 
my interests. I like to multiply the proofs : — 

I have been reading Mr. Gurney's " Visit to the West 
Indies," and am so interested in his account of emancipa- 



410 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 

tion that I have begun a review of his work, which I 
think of publishing in a pamphlet, and should be glad to 
have you do it if you can secure the profits to yourself, — 
if there shall be any profits. I should be truly glad to 
aid you in this way ; but whether the aid will amount to 
anything I. do not know. My nephew, who has heard a 
part of it read, will give you some idea of it. It will be 
finished in three or four days. Then comes the copying. 
It is possible that on re-examining it I may doubt 
whether it be worth publishing, and you must give me 
leave in that case to withhold it. Do not undertake the 
work unless you can anticipate some profits. 

Yery truly your friend, 

W. E. C. 

Of course I accepted this kind offer, and felt it to 
be a good omen to begin my work as publisher, with 
a book by Dr. Channing on Emancipation. 

In regard to further details of this publication, 
I received the following letters : — ■ 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I have been expecting to 
hear from you for some time past about the pamphlet, — 
whether you incline to undertake it ; and if so, when, and 
what form of publication seems best, etc. It is copied, 
and makes twenty-eight sheets of letter-paper in Mrs. C.'s 
and William's handwriting. To these must be added ex- 
tracts. So much time is passed, perhaps I may do well to wait 
till I reach Boston. One paragraph remains to be written 
for which I need Jay's little work on the Federal Govern- 
ment in relation to slavery, — I forget the precise title. 
It is in my library, and in the Athenaeum. Mr. Loring 
.must have it. You can send it to me through my brother 
George, if you wish my manuscript sent to the press im- 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 411 



mediately. I also want to look at Trumbull's travels in the 
West Indies. He told me that in Cuba there is a mortality 
of ten per cent a year on the sugar-plantations, and that 
during the gathering of the crop the slaves generally have 
but four hours for sleep ! You can get this book from the 
Athenaeum, and see if he makes this statement. I desire 
* to carry it through the press immediately, but wish that it 
may be published at a moment when the public mind will 
not be wholly absorbed by some election. I expect to be 
in Boston in the course of next week. I thank you for 
your reports of conversations. 1 They interested me greatly, 
but I cannot write about them, being enfeebled by a 
severe cold. A report has come of Mr. Bipley's having 
excited people by a late discourse. What is it ] 
Your sincere friend, 

W. E. Channing. 



My dear Miss Peabody, — I send you my last pages. 
Mary will tell you that I was somewhat troubled at not 
receiving the copy of the last on the day I expected it. 
I am so unable to re-write any part, that should I lose 
anything on the road the whole must be given up. How 
I rejoice to end it ! I began it under debility which con- 
fined me to the house, and have written the whole under 
unusual exhaustion. 

On finishing the last line, I could not but give distinct 
thanksgiving to God for having been strengthened to com- 
plete it. I expect a good deal of reproach ; but I feel 
that I did not begin it in my own will, though unworthy 
feelings have undoubtedly mixed with the execution. 
You will dislike what I have said of the Abolitionists, and 

1 These were the Conversations of an informal so-called " Tran- 
scendental Party." 



412 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



I beg you to speak freely. I must be just, however. Can 

you, without too great sacrifice of your sister's society, 
finish the enclosed so that she may bring it back 1 The 
press is moving somewhat rapidly. 

Your sincere friend, 

W. E. Channing. 

Very soon after this publication, Dr. Channing was 
written to by the Antislavery Societies of New York 
and Philadelphia for leave to print editions, each of 
twenty thousand copies. He said that it must not be 
done until my edition of a thousand copies had been 
sold. But I told him that I found booksellers would 
only take copies of me on sale to be accounted for in 
six months ; for the publishers seemed to conspire to 
discourage a woman from attempts to publish ; and I 
feared that if the popular tide was not taken at once, his 
dearest end — to serve the Antislavery cause — would 
be frustrated. I also said that if he did not, I should 
write to the Societies to go on with the cheap editions 
and risk the loss of mine. Mine, indeed, was never 
entirely sold. This gave Dr. Channing a painful im- 
pression of the difficulties in my way. But I told 
him that if I could not publish, I could import ; and 
that Mr. Allston had offered to give me help by his 
letters to secure reliable artists' materials, wdiich were 
a very great desideratum. It was only at certain 
places in London, which he knew of, that they could 
be had. 

This was the next year, however, as I see by the 
date of his reply, in which he wants to know if a 
letter of credit from him of £20 will do me any 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



413 



good. I did not accept this offer, but I mention it 
to show how untiring was his generosity, and to put 
in still stronger light the falsehood of the report of 
his meanness to me. When I found at the end of 
the first year that I had done something, notwith- 
standing the failure of my first plans, he wrote, — 

I rejoice in your bright prospects. If heroic endurance 
entitles one to success, you may put in a claim. I cannot 
judge of the facts you give me as proofs of your prospering 
or of your business talent; but it is so pleasant to be- 
lieve, that I start no objection. Perhaps I may want to 
order some books on my return ; but as this depends on 
my ability to meet accounts at the end of the year, I can- 
not tell beforehand. Keep my name still on your list of 
the library as a subscriber, for I find that you will have 
books this winter which I may wish to see. 

I wish I could recollect exactly what he said, the 
first time I gave him some change for something he 
bought. I do remember these words, — "a foolish 
phenomenon between you and me ; but we will keep 
it up and know the truth." 

But to return to Mr. Eipley, who had joined the Abo- 
litionist and the Non-resistant Societies, and had found 
at their meetings many who were tending to commu- 
nity ideas. He happened among others upon the 
Mendon Association ists, and invited all these people to 
his house for conversation, on several evenings. One 
time, when too large a party met for his own small 
parlor, they adjourned to my larger one in West 
Street. It was a most picturesque assembly of all the 
bats and owls that hoot in the night-times of our 



414 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



civilization, together with the inspired prophets of 
the new Protestantism. 

When Dr. Charming was in the city, he was in the 
habit of coming to my store in the mornings to* read 
the newspapers ; and there he would sometimes meet 
and talk with Mr. Brownson, Theodore Parker, and 
others ; and would like to hear me tell of the conver- 
sations at Mr. Kipley's, or wherever else the reformers 
met. And when he went to Ehode Island the next 
spring, he begged me to write to him constantly, and 
tell him whatever of interest transpired. To one of 
my letters written at this time he answered thus : — 

Newport, September, 1840. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — Your " newspaper letter" 
gave me so much pleasure that I am interested in answer- 
ing it. I hear so little of the world's movements that I 
am quite thankful to one who will tell me what is stirring. 
... Perhaps no part of your letter gave me more pleasure 
than your account of Mr. Alcott. He little suspects how 
my heart goes out to him. One of my dearest ideas and 
hopes is the union of labor and culture. The present state 
of things, by which the highest and almost the only bless- 
ings of life are so often denied to those who bear its heavy 
burdens, is sad, and must be changed. I wish to see labor 
honored and united with the free development of the in- 
tellect and heart. Mr. Alcott hiring himself out for day la- 
bor, and at the same time living in a region of high thought, 
is perhaps the most interesting object in our Common- 
wealth. I do not care much for Orpheus in the " Dial," — 
his nights there amuse rather than edify me, — but Orpheus 
at the plough is after my own heart. There he teaches a 
grand lesson, — more than most of us teach by the pen. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 415 

As to Mr. Brownson, you know how deeply I sympa- 
thize with him in his feelings towards what he calls the 
"masses" (an odious word! as if spiritual beings could 
be lumped together like heaps of matter) ; but I have 
little patience with his article. In regard to the working- 
men, including farmers, mechanics, domestics, and day-la- 
borers, he exaggerates their hardships in this country. In 
truth, it may be doubted whether they have not the easiest 
lot. Take our young lawyers and physicians ; see their 
struggles, disappointments, and the difficulties of establish- 
ing themselves in their professions. See nine out of ten of 
our merchants failing, perhaps again and again. Look at 
our young women, as well as those in advanced life, who 
are reduced to dependence by the decline of their families. 
Look at the literary class everywhere ; in what other class 
have so many been starved ? How few in the laboring 
classes have suffered more than you have done 1 At this mo- 
ment who suffers more than Miss Fuller, as you have described 
her 1 Your father, too, in a profession, finds it as hard to 
get work as any laborer in the streets ! How often have 
I known professional and mercantile men toiling anxiously 
through the night, sacrificing health, while the laborer has 
been wrapt in oblivion of all his cares ! The truth is, that 
as yet life is a conflict. I expect it to be so on earth here- 
after. My own constitution was broken by early toils. 
We all have a hard battle to fight. To me the matter of 
complaint is, not that the laboring class wants physical 
comforts, — though I wish these to be earned by fewer 
hours of labor, — but that they live only for their physical 
natures ; that so little justice is done to their souls ; that 
in early life they receive so few quickening influences ; 
that labor is a badge of inferiority ; that wealth forms a 
caste ; that the multitudes are cut off from communica- 
tions which would improve intellect, taste, manners ; that 



416 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



the spirit of brotherhood does not bind different conditions 
together. 

As to Mr. Brownson's remedies, they are shocking, or 
absurd. What can come from war, bloodshed, a death- 
struggle between rich and poor, but universal poverty and 
woe ] How foolish to talk of abolishing the law of inher- 
itance, and dividing the estates of the dead among the 
people ! What parents would leave estates under such 
conditions] How certainly would property pass from 
men's hands before death ! No good can come but from 
the spread of intellectual and moral power among all class- 
es, and the union of all by a spirit of brotherhood. This 
moral renovation is the supreme good, and brings all other 
in its train. I am sorry that Mr. Brownson has thrown 
away his influence by this article. The folly of the Whigs 
in spreading the article, drawing attention to it, identify- 
ing it with a party, raising up partisans for it, is of a piece 
with the general course of the blind conservatives. 

I was truly glad to learn that Dr. Walker understands 
the spirit of our alarmists. It is truly a spirit of unbelief. 
Men who think that a lecture by Mr. Emerson is to sub- 
vert Christianity, and an article of Mr. Brownson to make 
a wreck of property, show a want of faith in religion and 
society more alarming than the infidelity which they con- 
demn. But let us learn tolerance toward all parties. We 
are all ignorant and erring. Some of us stand out of the 
crowd and see the follies of all classes ; but our insulation 
may expose us to as great weaknesses. Over all of us 
watches a wise, paternal, infinite Love, and the sight of this 
will mingle hopes — blessed hopes — with the tears, and 
complaints, and rebukes which present evils call forth. 

Farewell and prosper ! or, what is better, learn to live 
without prosperity. 

Your sincere friend, W. E. Chanxixg. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 417 



I must now speak of Dr. Channing in relation to 
Theodore Parker, who never meddled with the ques- 
tion of Socialism, but almost agreed with his friend 
Eipley that the present Church organization would 
not sustain a living preacher. I replied to him once, 
when he said this to me, " You surely find yourself 
able to say all ? " 

u Yes," said he, " I do say all. But still Eipley is 
right, and I sympathize with him. It is no joke to 
go into a pulpit and say what I do, which I know 
strikes at the root of so many institutions, and which 
if it were understood and accepted would stop short 
so many in the career of their business.. It is a 
great responsibility to speak the word that comes in 
answer to prayer. Mr. Eipley has not nerve enough 
to do as I do." 

" And you yourself," said I, " cannot do it without 
its kindling your cheeks to fever glow, I see." 

" No," he replied, " nor without trembling all night 
after it. But the more one has to sacrifice, the greater 
joy it is." 

In a letter to Dr. Channing in which I told him of 
these words of Parker, I said : " The sacrifices that these 
young men have to make are not, as of old, flesh and 
blood, but the affections of the heart. They must see 
distrust and fear enter the hearts which they would 
love to keep in peace. They need the God-speed of 
minds great enough to cast out fear and to trust the 
Spirit, even when it manifests itself as a consuming 
fire." 

In this same letter I tell Dr. Channing that Mr. 
Eipley's struggles and inquiries had resulted in the 

27 



418 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

wish to form a society in the midst of us, — some- 
where in New England, — to be supported by the 
manual labor of all its members ; to have no special 
domestic service, but general co-operative work ; 
and the end of which is to be education, — so as to 
make it a veritable university. 

When Dr. Channing returned to Boston, his first 
interest was about Mr. Bipley's plan. Manual-labor 
schools had long been a favorite idea of his, and he 
had written an article about them, in 1836, in the 
" Moral Keformer," when Mr. Brownson was editor of 
it. He had hitherto considered that our general 
Government allowed our whole political economy to 
be on the principle of co-operation and free trade; 
but as this great idea of the Constitution dawned on 
so few, or was shut out by the prevalence of a low 
commercial or manufacturing interest, he thought 
it well that true principles should be worked out by 
small societies in the midst of us, to teach those 
people (not readers) who only can learn through the 
senses. Mr. Bipley had an informal meeting at his 
own house that winter once a week, which, as it was 
in the evening, Dr. Channing could not attend ; but 
I attended, and he always came the next day to hear 
about it from me. He did not expect everything 
from the success of this movement that Mr. Bipley 
did, but he expected a certain amount of good would 
be done. Want of money made it necessary for Mr. 
Bipley to take scholars to board from such parents as 
were glad to have their children taught to combine 
study with work on the land. But just now Dr. 
Channing was most interested in the enterprise as an 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



419 



illustration of the practicability of uniting manual 
labor with intellectual pursuits. He wanted, our 
agricultural population to see that the land could get 
cultivated, and that in the best manner, while neither 
themselves nor their children were made beasts of 
burden ; that leisure could be redeemed for intellect- 
ual pursuits and the arts that adorn life ; and through 
a levelling-up process, the distinction of classes dis- 
appear by the universalizing of good manners. On 
this account he felt as much interest in the Mendon 
Association as in Mr. Bipley's, and corresponded with 
Eev. Adin Ballou, and read the " Practical Christian " 
even to the last of his life. He was always glad to 
hear about the details of Mr. Kipley's views and 
plans, but continually said that he must be careful 
not to adulterate his company with those who went 
in merely from selfish motives, and without the spirit 
of martyrdom to the idea ; and that he must sacredly 
respect the individuality of families. 

Among the many things which I remember as 
evincing Dr. Channing's interest in social subjects 
and the laboring classes, I find a memorandum 
(though I cannot date it) of his having received a 
newspaper from England in which was recorded the 
vote of a society of working-men to thank him for 
his tract on " Self-Culture." " This is fame" said he. 
" No response from the more favored classes ever 
gave me any degree of the pleasure that this does." 
He was always greatly pleased at being asked to de- 
liver lectures before popular societies, and always 
lamented it when he was unable from ill-health to do 
so. Compliments from the literary and upper classes 



420 



REMINISCENCES OF DK. CHANNING. 



he took as things of course, and never referred to 
them. He had letters continually from the literary 
men of other countries full of compliments. Some- 
times his wife and children wished him to show them 
to me, but he would not. " They are of no impor- 
tance," he would say. 

In the spring of 1841, Dr. Channing went to 
Philadelphia, and while there delivered an address 
before the Mercantile Association. It impressed me 
as a more beautiful and glowing production than had 
for some time issued from his pen, and I wrote to him 
to tell him so. He replied as follows : — 

Newport, June 21, 1841. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I thank you for your letter. 
Your feelings on reading the " Address " gave me much 
pleasure. , Such a tribute of the heart as well as judgment 
can never be unacceptable. As to our friend Parker, be 
deals too much in exaggerations. He makes truth unneces- 
sarily repulsive ; and, as I think,, sometimes goes beyond 
truth. I shall judge for myself of his discourse. Cur- 
rent opinions do not weigh a feather in such a case. 1 

I have had a very pleasant visit Southward ; have seen 
much of society and the country, and experienced much 
kindness. The Abolitionists have given me a cordial wel- 
come, and it delights me to see how a great common object 
establishes in an hour a confidence and friendship which 
otherwise years -are necessary to produce. My " Emanci- 
pation " (which is yours in a sense) has been spread widely, 

1 This sermon by Mr. Parker was the one preached at South 
Boston on the " Transient and Permanent in Christianity," which 
was not yet printed ; but I had told him that it was in the press, 
and what a breeze it had blown up. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 421 



and I believe done much good. It has been put into the 
hands of men of influence. It is just stereotyped, and 
I know not how many thousands have been sent forth. 
A Quaker from England brought me a letter from the ven- 
erable Clarkson, with a lock of his hair in testimony of 
his pleasure in the work. I cannot tell you the hospital- 
ities which my abolition labors have won for me, nor was 
I aware of the extent of their influence. I ought cer- 
tainly to be grateful for it. The opposition they have 
excited has done me great good, has been a very precious 
part of the experience of my life ; and now the blessings 
of success are added to the higher blessing of suffering for 
the truth. I do not wear as yet a crown of martyrdom ! 
I hope, however, I have not declined it by dishonorable 
compliance. I have seen more of the Quakers, and love 
them much ; but as a people they have lost their first life. 
Rules, usages, and discipline have taken the place of the 
Spirit. My Quaker library has been increased by the 
journals of Elias Hicks, David Wheeler, and a new edition 
of John Woolman. Have you read Woolman] I was so 
affected by his journal, two or three years ago, that I began 
a review of it, and went a good way ; but was drawn 
aside by other objects. A Quaker lady told me that 
Charles Lamb used to say that Woolman drew tears from 
his eyes. In his exquisite essay on " Quaker Meeting " he 
says, " Get the writings of John Woolman by heart." 

I have read this last week, with inexpressible delight, 
Nichols's " Architecture of the Heavens." How it lifts one 
above the earth, and makes one free of the Universe ! 
What a wonderful being is man, who from such slight 
hints can construct the Universe ! How petty seem the 
strifes of the world after this journey through the creation ! 
Should we explore this creation with such joy, were it not 
to be our everlasting inheritance 1 



422 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 

Mary tells me your shop disappoints you. You are in- 
deed called to suffer disappointment ; but be of good heart ! 
A large share of good has fallen to you. How many noble 
minds have been open to you ! How few have sent forth 
their sympathies as far and as joyfully as yourself 1 And 
has not a divine faith silently grown up amidst suffering 
and disappointment ] With sincere regards to your family, 
lam 

Very truly your friend, 

W. E. Channing. 

P.S. Send Mr. Parker's sermon through the post-office 
as soon as it is published. 

That summer Dr. Channing resumed writing his 
review of Woolman, which however he never com- 
pleted. 

Soon after he writes again to me thus : — 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I return the second vol- 
ume of the " Medecin de Canipagne," which I have read 
with much pleasure. How strange that the writer of such 
a book should minister to the impure taste of Paris! ... I 
infer from your letter that you are somewhat excited about 
the controversy in Boston. Possess your soul in patience ! 
Let not rude attacks on any disturb you. 

Yours faithfully, 

W. E. Channing. 

This was accompanied by a letter to my sister 
Mary in answer to an account she had written to him 
of a week she passed at the Normal School of Lex- 
ington. 1 It shows the universality of his sympathies. 
Some extracts from it were published, with his leave, 

1 I have not been able to procure this letter for insertion here. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



423 



in the Boston " Daily Advertiser/' at the especial re- 
quest of Dr. Howe and Mr. Mann. 

Having sent Mr. Parker's sermon to Dr. Channing, 
according to his request expressed in his letter of 
June 21, I immediately received the following in 
reply : — 

Newport, July 6, 1841. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I thank you for Mr. Par- 
ker's sermon, and I wish you to thank him for the copy he 
sent me. You will wish to know my opinion, and, though 
I cannot go into the subject, I feel that I ought to send a 
line. The great idea of the discourse — the immutable- 
ness of Christian truth — I respond to entirely. I have 
labored to separate the notion of arbitrariness, positiveness, 
from men's notions of Christianity. That this religion is 
universal, eternal truth, the expression of the Divine mind, 
and corresponding to the Divine principles in human na- 
ture, is what I feel perhaps as deeply as any ; and I was 
moved by Parker's strong, heartfelt utterance of it. Still, 
there was a good deal in the discourse I did not respond to. 
I grieved that he did not give some clear, direct expression 
of his belief in the Christian miracles. His silence un- 
der such circumstances makes me fear that he does not 
believe them. I see not how the rejection of these can be 
separated from the rejection of Jesus Christ. Without 
them he becomes a mere fable ; for nothing is plainer than 
that from the beginning miracles constituted his history. 
There is not a trace of a time when he existed in men's 
minds without them. His resurrection was always the 
essential, grand fact in men's impressions of him, at least as 
distinctly recognized as his crucifixion. Miracles enter into 
all his conceptions of himself, as these have been handed 
down to us. They are so inwoven into all his teachings 



424 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 



and acts, that in taking them away we have next to nothing 
left. Without miracles the historical Christ is gone. No 
such being is left us ; and in losing him, how much is lost ! 
Eeduce Christianity to a set of abstract ideas, sever it from 
its teacher, and it ceases to be " the power of God unto 
salvation. 7 ' Allow that it could give us the idea of perfec- 
tion, which I cannot concede ; yet what I want is, not the 
naked idea, but the existence, the realization of perfection. 
Some seem to think that the idea of infinite perfection 
answers all the purposes of a God. But,. no : the existence 
of this perfection is the ground of my hope, my happi- 
ness ; and so I want the existence of human perfection. 
Christian truth coming to me from the living soul of Jesus, 
with his living faith and love, and brought out in his grand 
and beautiful life, is a very different thing from an ab- 
stract system. The more I know of Jesus the less I can 
spare him ; and the place which he fills in my heart, 
the quickening office which his character performs, is to 
me no mean proof of his reality and his superhuman 
greatness. 

In regard to miracles I never had the least difficulty. 
The grand miracle, as it often has been said, is the perfect, 
divine character of Christ ; and to such a being a miracu- 
lous mode of manifestation seems natural. It is by no 
figure of speech that I call Christ miraculous. He was 
more separate from other men than his acts from other acts. 
He was the sinless and spotless son of God, distinguished 
from all men by that infinite peculiarity, — freedom from 
moral evil. He was the perfect image of God, the per- 
fection of the spiritual nature. Is it not plain that 
such a being must have been formed under discipline 
and influences distinct from those of all other men ; that 
he cannot be explained by the laws under which we 
live ; that he is thus a moral miracle, though not such 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



425 



as implies any compulsory influence 1 To such a being 
the miracles of Christ's history wonderfully agree. The 
outward and the inward correspond in God's system. 
God reveals himself to us by outward, material types. So 
his Son is revealed. What beautiful types of Christ's 
moral, healing, quickening power we have in the miracu- 
lous parts of his history ! I feel as I read them that the 
conception of such a character as Christ, and the unfold- 
ing of it in such harmonious acts or operations tran- 
scended human power, especially in that low moral age ; 
and that nothing but the truth of the history, nothing 
but the actual manifestation of such a being in such 
forms, can explain or account for the Gospel narratives. 
Mr. Parker supposes the truth to have been revealed 
to Jesus by his moral perfection. I will not stop to 
examine this, but will only say that the men to whom 
Christ was to unfold this truth were unspeakably distant 
from this perfection ; that they were low, gross, spiritually 
dead ; that the spiritual evidence which was enough for 
him hardly gleamed on their darkened understanding. 
How needed was some outward, visible symbol of the truth 
to such minds as Christ's resurrection ! It shows great 
ignorance of human nature and of God's modes of opera- 
tion to suppose that he would approach a darkened, sen- 
sual world by purely spiritual, abstract teaching. 

As to his authority, there is a sense in which I think it 
important, and reliance on it most natural and reasonable. 
I never meet a superior mind without some degree of reli- 
ance on it. From such a mind as Christ's I am sure I can 
hear nothing but truth. Whatever he says I am sure will, 
when fully understood, be found in harmony with God's 
perfection. This leads me to reverential study of his word 
as of no other. If in the course of such study I meet 
anything which seems inconsistent with any known truth, 



426 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 

and especially with these pure liberal conceptions which 
Jesus has given me, I feel that I have not reached his 
meaning. I wait for further light ; I examine the dark 
passage again and again ; and the probability is that the 
light will at length shine. If not, I cannot suffer from my 
ignorance. 

I will only add that to us the great evidence of the mira- 
cles is found in the religion itself and in Christ's character, 
neither of which can be understood without them, and 
with which they have vital connections. Without the 
divine excellence of Christ, the testimony of the miracles 
would not satisfy us ; this is the grand foundation and 
object of faith. Still, the miracles do not cease to be im- 
portant, for they are among the bright manifestations 
of his character. Their harmony with it is a proof of its 
existence ; and, above all, there are vast multitudes who, 
with some moral appreciation of Christ, are yet so imper- 
fect, so earthly, that these outward manifestations of his 
greatness, of his connection with God, have real and great 
value as helps to faith. 

I have written this letter with an impatient haste which 
sometimes gets possession of me. I cannot correct it. 
Will you copy it first, and then show it to Mr. Parker, 
letting him understand that I have written it as a friend 
and not as an author, and without any aim at precau- 
tion ] And will you then send it to me 1 — for there are 
thoughts in it which I may wish to expand, when I can 
get time for this subject. 

Your sincere friend, 

W. E. Channing. 

To the above letter I wrote a long reply, from some 
parts of which I think he took a somewhat false im- 
pression of my own thought, as I w 7 as only intent on 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 427 



explaining what I knew to be Mr. Parker's. But I 
will give his next letter without comment : — 

Newport, July 28, 1841. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I have no time for a cor- 
respondence on the subject of my last. I was not able in 
that to do more than throw out some disconnected thoughts. 
Nor can I answer your last by Eustis at any length, but 
send only a line of friendly admonition. 

I was grieved to find you talking so lightly of " daring 
to be decidedly wrong." I mean not to justify myself, but 
I ought to say that I have had but one form of " caution," 
so far as I know myself. I have never hesitated to say 
clearly and strongly what I was persuaded was true. But 
I have not " dared " to send forth opinions around which 
doubts and objections lingered in my own mind. I hold 
a clear conviction of truth to be essential to a religious 
teacher, and I reprobate as well as dread the teaching of 
that which we have not thought on calmly and seriously, 
or which on being examined has opened on us problems, 
perplexities, and difficulties, rendering much reflection 
needful in order to our speaking with the deliberate con- 
sciousness of truth. The want of reverence for truth mani- 
fest in the rash teaching of our times shocks me greatly. 
I owe the little which I am to the conscientiousness with 
which I have listened to objections springing up in my own 
mind to what I have inclined and sometimes thirsted to be- 
lieve \ and I have attained through this to a serenity of 
faith, which once seemed denied in the present state. 

I am also grieved to find you insensible to the clear, 
bright distinction between Jesus Christ and ourselves. 
To me — and I should think to every reader of the New 
Testament — he stands apart, alone, in the only particular 
in which separation is to be desired. He is a being of 



428 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



moral perfection, unstained by sin. The great conscious- 
ness which pervades, haunts, and darkens all human 
spirits, — that of moral evil, — throws not the slightest 
shade over him. His consciousness is his own ; the whole 
tone indeed his own, and would be false in any other. 
Though he came to be an example, yet in the points in 
which we so much need an example, — in our conflict 
with inward evil, in our approach to God as sinners, in 
penitence and self-purification, — he wholly fails us. It 
was in reference to this that I spoke of him as a " moral 
miracle/' not intending by this to refer at all to the for- 
mation of his character, — which, though wholly unknown 
to us, was wholly free, — but to the exception which his 
character forms to all human experience. To my mind he 
was intended to be an anticipation of the perfection to 
which we are guided, to reveal to us what is in germ in 
all souls. 

This view you must have gathered from my writings. 
But my own history,- the history of the race, and of the 
best beings I have known have taught me the immense 
distance of us all from Christ. He is to be approached 
by gradual self-crucifixion ; by a war with the evil within 
us, which will not end till the grave. The idea that the 
germ within us is to shoot up at once into the perfection 
of Jesus ; that we are to be " gifted " in this stage of our 
being " with his powers ; " to be " as powerful as the teach- 
er," — this certainly never entered my thoughts ; and it 
shows such a self-ignorance, such an ignorance of human 
history and human life, that one wonders how it can have 
entered a sound mind. Of the formation of Christ's mind 
we know nothing ; and the secrecy in which his spiritual 
history is veiled is no small presumption against its appli- 
cableness to ourselves. Infinite wisdom has infinite modes 
of disciplining and unfolding the spirit. Jesus great end of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



429 



revealing to us the Perfect is equally answered, be his own 
spiritual history what it may. All spirits, however un- 
folded, are essentially one. In the response of our spirits 
to his perfection, in his deep fraternal sympathy with the 
human soul, and in his divine promises, we have founda- 
tions of the profoundest and most joyful faith in our 
heavenly existence to guide and aid us towards it, to show 
us that which exists in a germ in all souls. I am grieved, 
I must say, by extravagances on this and other points, 
because I have lived in hope of the manifestation of a 
truth and spiritual life which is to give a new impulse to 
the world ; and it is some trial at my time of life to have 
any such hope baffled. However, I do not despair. The 
true teachers who are to unite " love and power and 
soundness of mind " will come ! 

As to Mr. Parker, I wish him to preach what he thor- 
oughly believes and feels. I trust the account you received 
of attempts to put him down was in the main a fiction. 
Let the full heart pour itself forth ! And still more, — it 
will rejoice me to find a good accomplished which I cannot 
anticipate. I want no dark prophecies accomplished ; but 
I do assure you that the weaknesses of the good are among 
the trials of my faith. I repeat that I am too much occu- 
pied to follow up this subject now. Give my love to Mr. 
Parker. I shall be glad to hear from him, and in perfect 
freedom. I think he is probably to be one of the many 
who are made wise by error and suffering. But I honor 
his virtues. I feel that he has seized on some great 
truths, and I earnestly desire for him that illumination 
which will make him an unmixed blessing to his fellow- 
creatures. 

Very sincerely your friend, 

W. E. Channing. 



430 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAXXIN/G. 

P. S. I ought to tell you that I am the more disinclined 
to write on the topics of this letter because I get no light 
from the "new views." I seem to learn very little. Their 
vague generalities do not satisfy me. They seem wholly 
to overlook the actual moral condition of the human race 
on which Christianity is founded, and which renders it 
important to the multitude of men that they should have 
some evidence additional to that which is purely spiritual. 
Thousands and millions who desire to believe in immor- 
tality would be exposed to all the misgivings on that point 
which beset the best and strongest heathen minds, were it 
not for the resurrection and promises of Jesus Christ. 
Without the inward evidences of this truth, outward tes- 
timony would not satisfy me. But with so many phenom- 
ena hostile to these evidences, and with so much guilt and 
infirmity to darken the future, 1 am most grateful for the 
resurrection and promises of Jesus Christ. Shall I be 
helped by being robbed of these confirmations of my faith ? 
At this moment most of the "true spiritualists" are in 
danger of losing their faith in immortality through their 
Pantheistic notions of the soul and its absorption in the 
only substance, — Deity. These notions threaten all sense 
of moral responsibility and moral freedom. The spirit- 
ualist is often saved from the wreck of faith by Christian- 
ity, without suspecting it. 

Eustis preached a touching sermon yesterday upon the 
" loneliness " of Jesus Christ. I claim little resemblance 
to my divine friend and saviour ; but I seem doomed to 
drink of this cup with him to the last. I see and feel the 
harm done by this crude speculation, while I also see much 
nobleness to bind me to its advocates. In its opinions 
generally I see nothing to give me hope. Example aids 
me only by the moral enthusiasm which its grandeur in- 
spires. The noblest example — that of sympathy with the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 431 



fallen — becomes impressive in proportion to the moral 
dignity of him who manifests it. Again I am 

Yours, W. E. C. 

To the above letter I replied that I did believe in 
the actual difference of Christ from all other men by 
reason of his sinlessness ; and endeavored to tell him 
how I thought his spiritual history could be divined 
if we faithfully sought to form Christ within ourselves, 
to which he called us by his triumphant victory when 
he was also in human conditions of temptation. If 
his spiritual history was peculiar in kind, he could not 
reveal to us the life, truth, and way of our spiritual 
history. To this letter he responded as follows : — 

Newport, August, 1841. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — I thank you for your long 
letter ; but cannot reply, as I am otherwise engaged, and 
therefore could only write with that " unguardedness " 
which, though so beautiful to some, is to me a moral de- 
fect. I fear, or rather hope, that I wrote unguardedly about 
Pantheism. I am happy to say that in my conversation 
with Transcendental ministers I have heard no Pantheism, 
v Indeed, Mr. Alcott is the only man from whom I have 
heard it ; but I supposed that I saw in him the tendency of 
a good many of the school. But I know too little to war- 
rant what I fear was a sweeping passage in my letter. So 
much for off-hand judgments. 

You will not infer from my letters that I am at all 
grieved at the publication of views from which I dissent. 
Let the honest, earnest spirit speak ; and the more fully and 
freely for attempts to put it to silence ! I am somewhat 
disappointed that this new movement is to do so little 
for the spiritual regeneration of society, — which, how- 



432 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



ever, must go on, and which no errors can long keep back. 
To me Christ is the great spiritualist. This view binds 
me to him. Under him the battle of the human race is 
to be fought. Any speculations which throw mists or 
doubts over his history, and diminish the conviction of 
his grandeur and importance, are poor, and must come to 
nought. I do not believe that the great object of faith — 
which is the perfection of the human soul, or everlasting, 
unbounded spiritual development — is to be seized as a 
reality, and made the grand aspiration and end of life 
without the quickening and inspiring influences of his 
character and truth. Indeed, perfection becomes a dim 
shadow without the help of his living manifestation of 
it. I do fear a tendency in the present movement to 
loosen the tie which binds the soul to its great friend 
and deliverer. 

It would seem as if your experience had shown you 
human nature developing its highest sentiments without 
help and confirmation from abroad. To me history, obser- 
vation, and experience read very different lessons \ and the 
consequences of overlooking them are not doubtful. The 
profound ignorance of J esus Christ shown by those who find 
in him a restraint, and who talk of outgrowing him, is dis- 
couraging. 1 find in him only freedom. I have little hope 
in this new movement save as it indicates the deep wants 
of the soul and a consciousness of its greatness. Nor have 
I fears. / believe in the purity of those ivho are concerned 
in it. I believe, too, that it will spread but little ; for 
there is little in the times to favor any who separate them- 
selves comparatively from the grand impulse given by 
Christ to the world. I see as yet but one decided step 
towards a higher practical manifestation of Christianity ; 
and that is the Abolition Society, — and how imperfect that 
is we both know. 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 433 

I have seen this last week a member of the Mendon 
Community. I look to that with a good deal of hope. I 
never hoped so strongly and so patiently. . . . 

What I write without time for reflection is a very poor 
picture of my thoughts. I shall have time to do justice 
to my views by-and-by. I will only add that your specu- 
lations about the peculiarity of Jesus seem to me unphilo- 
sophical and fantastic. A seraph moving about among us 
with his wings would not be a greater anomaly ! For the 
world I would not have my faith in the soul's perfection 
and everlasting growth rest on such foundations. I attach, 
however, little importance to such speculations. Jesus 
will give little difficulty to those who understand the 
unity of the spiritual world amidst all its varieties. I 
shall be glad to hear from you, though I write no more 
in reply. 

Yours very truly, 

W. E. Channing. 

P.S. I hope the spiritualists will be calm and kind as 
well as bold. Great indulgence is due to men who think 
that another is about to tear Christianity from them and 
their children. I hope I can bear even a bitter zeal from 
those who honestly view me in this light. The supercilious 
scoffers and selfish conservatives deserve less mercy. But 
there are few of these without a mixture of some real con- 
cern for Christianity ; and this is so infinite a good, even 
in its lower forms, that much unreasonable sensitiveness 
in regard to it may be forgiven. 

W. E. C. 

It will be seen by the date of this letter that, by 
" spiritualists,'' Dr. Channing did not mean those 
explorers of the " night-side of Nature " of whom 

28 



434 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



we first heard in America several years after Dr. 
Channing's death, and who now go by that name ; 
but those who believe that the Spirit of the Father 
of spirits ever waits to commune freely with His 
children. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



T AM sorry to have to crowd into one chapter my 
remembrances of the last winter of Dr. Chan- 
ning's life (1841-42) ; for his most lovely and distin- 
guishing characteristics were especially brought out 
in connection with a kind of revolution which was 
taking place in my own mind, of which I must speak 
in order to illustrate them. 

I made a new acquaintance in that year, a young 
Lieutenant of the United States Army, who first at- 
tracted my attention by inquiring at my library for 
Kant's works in some other than the German lan- 
guage. In talking with him about this book, I was 
struck with his different cast and method of thought 
from that to which I was accustomed. He did not 
(as Mr. Emerson afterward said of him) " draw in 
our team," but rather — referring to his marked and 
fresh individuality — seemed to be " a special answer 
to a special prayer." For some time I did not know 
even his name, but my attention was riveted by his 
unexpected and oracular remarks, often quite piquant 
in their expression : " The Transcendentalists of Bos- 
ton are the extreme opposite of Kant ; they do not 
see tHe transcendental objective (except Mr. Emerson, 
who names it Oversold) ; but it is they themselves 
that transcend." Of Parkers sermon on " The Tran- 



436 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING,, 



sient and Permanent in Christianity," he said, " It 
wants unity." Of Emerson's discourse at Divinity 
Hall, " It is a true gospel addressed to the philoso- 
pher and theologian; but it is not the preaching to 
the poor, for that must address heart and will rather 
than intellect.''* Of the so-called Orthodox, " They have 
lost the transcendental objective out of their creeds, 
which now are only logical fetiches" Of the Unita- 
rians, * They have no life, for they mistake manifesta- 
tion for principle (which it always contradicts), and 
are the only Christians who idolize a man ; for the 
Orthodox sink or raise Jesus into God before they 
worship him." 

" And so lose," said I, " what the Swedenborgians 
call the Divine Humanity ? " 

" Yes," said he, " the Orthodox of to-day are Tri- 
theists, not Trinitarians." 

" That is just what Dr. Channing says," I replied. 
" And therefore he repudiates the unscriptural word 
trinity in his preaching. But he draws a strong line 
of distinction between Jesus, the unfallen son of man, 
and all other men, whose more or less imperfect na- 
tures prevent them from being, like him, transparent 
images of God. Dr. Channing cannot be classed with 
any sect. He has fraternized with the Unitarians be- 
cause they alone have stood bravely for free inquiry, 
independence of private judgment, and free speech ; 
and been persecuted for it, and excommunicated by 
the sects who arrogate to themselves the name of Chris- 
tian. But he is not sympathizing with them now in 
excommunicating Theodore Parker on account of his 
theology, and James Freeman Clarke on account of 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 437 



the new catholic organization he would give the 
Church." 1 

" It is only in unphilosophic minds," said he, "that 
the doctrine of the Trinity becomes Tritheism. The 
formula of the Trinity was the legitimate abstraction 
of the Greek mind, — an analytic definition of the 
Divine nature, which had been revealed by the facts 
of Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection. Those 
facts of actual life in history are the seed of the 
Christian religion. Spiritual life is absolute in God, 
who is love ; and manifest in Jesus, who is truth, — 
the first begotten of love ; and the influence proceed- 
ing from love and truth upon the human race is the 
Holy Spirit. The whole Trinity is in the Father, 
for he is love, wisdom, and power; and the whole 
Trinity is in Jesus Christ, for he manifests love, 
wisdom, and power ; and every man is a trinity of 
feeling, thought, and activity; so the whole trinity 
is in the Holy Spirit, which it is the purpose of the 
absolute love to produce through the manifested 
truth, in the aspiring energy of men. This is the 
creed which Athanasius set up against the heresy of 
Arius, which had denied the at-one-ment with God 
that the human race "receives by Jesus." The great 
mischief was that the Eoman empire undertook to 
meddle, and say who should belong to the Church, 
and set up this philosophic formula at the threshold, 
to be acknowledged as the condition of entrance. 
Since only philosophers could understand this defini- 
tion, this arbitrary decree put a lie into the mouth 

1 At first the Suffolk Association did not welcome but rather 
opposed the inception of the " Church of the Disciples." 



438 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



of every unphilosophical Christian who obeyed it. 
The apostles required no abstract doctrinal creed, but 
a belief in the fads of Christ's life and death and 
resurrection, as proved facts of history. Men can be 
forced to believe facts by proofs, but faith is the gift 
of God to those only who dewutly and freely aspire to 
understand the spiritual meaning of the facts which 
will be found to symbolize all the spiritual truth that 
shall ever be unfolded in the history of mankind. 
The conception of the Trinity of the Divine nature is 
as old as philosophic thought. We find it in thin ab- 
stractions in India, Phoenicia, Egypt, etc., being sug- 
gested in every natural form ; but it was only revealed 
perfectly in the manifestation which Jesus made of a 
spiritual life that takes the sting from death." 

All the above thoughts were not expressed at once, 
but in several conversations, illustrated by the history 
of Church dogma, and noted down by me at the time, in 
order to be read to Dr. Channing in my Sunday visit. 

Its full meaning was further illustrated to me be- 
fore Sunday, by my learning something of my young 
philosopher and theologian personally. He told me 
himself that he had been commissioned at nineteen 
years of age and sent to the Florida war ; and he had 
just been permitted to resign, because the surgeon 
of the army had pronounced him ill, with even small 
chance to get home to die. I learned later that he had 
graduated at West Point with high honors, was a pro- 
found mathematician, a keen student of the science 
of war and reader of military biography, especially of 
that of Napoleon Bonaparte. Otherwise he had little 
literary culture, his reading having been largely Lord 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 439 



Byron's and Shelley's poetry. " Queen Mab," lie said, 
had been his gospel ; and his theology also was Shel- 
ley's, — namely, that God is merely a complex of the 
laws of Nature. But his life in Florida had brought 
him to deeper truth. He was Lieutenant to the cel- 
ebrated Captain Bonneville, whose Indian imperturb- 
ability of temperament, iron will, and despotic habits 
made an immense impression on his imagination, and 
commanded his admiration. Captain Bonneville soon 
left him in command of a regiment of desperadoes 
(who were, however, condignly ignorant), and had 
counselled him to keep himself entirely aloof from 
their familiarity, in order to preserve the prestige of 
his authority. In the long intervals between short 
periods of intense military activity, he was alone in 
his tent with only his books and thoughts, and was 
knowing to gigantic crimes being perpetrated by the 
State Government of Florida, which wholly misled 
and hoodwinked the distant Central Government. In 
one of his meditations on Captain Bonneville's and his 
own power over his men, he said to himself: " These 
brutal men are governed not by the complex of my 
thoughts, nor by the complex of the laws of Nature, of 
which they know nothing, but by me, — a self-determin- 
ing force, a free spirit, a, person" And at once it flashed 
like lightning upon him, "And God is behind the 
complex of the laws of Nature, — a self-acting, free, 
supreme, infinite Person, to whom all finite persons 
are responsible." He started from his seat, seized 
" Queen Mab " and flung it from the door of his tent 
into the far distance ; and then rushed to his valise 
and took out the Bible that his mother had put into 



440 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 

it when he left home, and for the first time opened it. 
He could not believe that it was by blind chance his 
eye fell on the words from Isaiah quoted by Christ in 
the synagogue of Nazareth on the day he commenced 
his ministry : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," etc. 
As he read these words he thought he heard a roar 
of artillery, and sprang to the door of his tent — to 
learn that the roar was within his own soul ! He 
then told of his reading the New Testament, and his 
study of the action of Jesus, and of the apostles 
after the Spirit had brought to their minds and inter- 
preted to them the words of Jesus. Soon the desire 
arose in his own mind to leave the sphere of unhal- 
lowed activity in which he found himself, and to 
become a minister of Christ. So he prayed that God 
would take him out of his present bonds, for he could 
not himself break the oath of the soldier. "And God 
has answered my prayer," said he, " and delivered me 
by means of this malarial fever, which incapacitates 
me as a soldier. T have not died, as the surgeon pre- 
dicted I should ; and already I have begun my theo- 
logical studies in a private and desultory way, by 
studying out the history of the dogmas of the Chris- 
tian Church, beginning with the Trinity." 

Now, true to one of my first intuitions, that " no- 
body believes what is false because it is false, but be- 
cause it seems to be true," I had longed all my life 
to learn the genesis and history in human thought 
of a belief in. the Trinity, which so many minds 
greater than mine had accepted. This I said to Dr. 
Channing the next Sunday when I went to see him, 
and told him all about the conversations of the week ; 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



441 



and I was delighted to find that he was quite open 
to considering the subject cle novo, recalling the con- 
versation with Coleridge in 1822, when he had af- 
firmed that the doctrine of the Trinity was "the 
perfection of human reason." He said : " And Cole- 
ridge agreed with your friend in deprecating that this 
formula should be imposed on the mind arbitrarily ; 
because no abstract statement can really be believed 
that is not produced by the mind's own action on 
facts, as your friend truly says. To make a sacra- 
ment of an unintelligible proposition is consecrating 
a lie, and demoralizes the mind. I have no objection 
to the formula of the Trinity as Coleridge explained 
it, — the relation perceived between the creating 
spirit and the created spirit in its purity, by which 
man finds intelligent and moral life in the Holy 
Spirit. But in my office of preaching the gospel to 
the multitude, I avoid all abstractions of the philoso- 
phers ; and, like St. John and St. Paul, I labor to fix 
attention on the living Son of God in a son of man, 
who could defy his enemies to convict him of any 
sin, and who lived in the world and died to convince 
them that God was their Father as well as his, and to 
show how they might form Christ within themselves. 
Hence I have avoided a word which now is associated 
with an error that destroys the simplicity of worship, 
— Atheism." 

At another time I told him of Lieutenant Greene's 
declaring that election (to privileges) was a fact on 
the intellectual and other planes of life, and had 
only been made false on the spiritual plane by Cal- 
vin's tacking to it the doctrine of reprobation and 



442 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



everlasting punishment, — a presumptuous sin on his 
part ; for he had no business to invent, in his am- 
bition to make his system of theology complete, what 
was certainly not revealed, and which really denied 
to God the power of freely forgiving. Christ taught 
that the method of life is love (those who pursue 
any other " know not what they do"), for love leads 
at once to the fulfilling of righteousness to men and 
worship of the true God. 

A few days after this Dr. Channing met Lieutenant 
Greene at my room, and sat down with the air of a 
determination to become acquainted. I do not re- 
member just in what connection he said these words : 
" The doctrine of irresistible grace, w^hich of course 
you know I consider the most monstrous of errors, 
because it contravenes the principle of human free- 
dom." There was a pause, when I said, " Lieutenant 
Greene would say, Sir, that these doctrines are identi- 
cal." He looked up in astonishment, and in the con- 
versation that ensued between them I looked intently 
from one to the other as they spoke ; for it was my 
own past and future in discussion on the essential 
points of personal responsibility and God's forgive- 
ness of sin, — concerning which my mind had never 
been satisfied since that shock upon my moral sensi- 
bility received before my acquaintance with Dr. 
Channing, and to which I have alluded in the early 
part of this volume. 

The next day when Dr. Channing came into my 
room as usual, he said to me with the most paternal 
tone, " I observed yesterday great solicitude in your 
manner as your young friend and I were conversing." 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 443 



" The subject was very interesting, Sir," I replied. 

" Oh, yes," said he, " I know it ; the most interest- 
ing — the question of questions, certainly — how to 
harmonize the free-will of man and the pardoning grace 
of God. Both are irrefragable facts. But you must 
remember that calmness of mind is indispensable to 
the discovery of truth. We need not be distressingly 
anxious in our Father's house. All apparent contra- 
dictions will be reconciled gradually, if we have faith 
to believe that the eternal reason is the creating 
Father of our reason, which, if it be finite, is growing 
forever into the infinite by prayer and moral effort." 

" I am not painfully anxious," I said. " This new 
way of looking at myself from God's point of view 
rather than from my own seems to be clearing up my 
practical difficulties, by helping me to forgive myself 
for not being perfect, and to accept humbly and 
gratefully the forgiveness of my sins." 

" Oh, then, do not let me trouble or hinder you," 
said he. And, inquiring into my meaning, I told him 
that I thought the Unitarian method of self-discipline 
was a kind of attempt to lift ourselves up by our own 
ears, — assuming a responsibility of self-culture which 
was self-torture. (I think this was the time when he 
told me of the visit of the old lady, who said the 
Unitarians left the soul in despair before the moral 
ideal they set up.) 

I wish to draw attention to the fact that in all this 
winter, when he saw that I was reviewing to criticise 
the whole system of thought and action that I had 
been w r orking out under his lead, he did not say one 
word to check it, but rather seemed to rejoice in my 



444 REMINISCENCES OF DR. GHANNING* 



freely questioning it. He took great interest in my 
study with Lieutenant Greene of the history of the 
dogmas of the Church, and rny search for the truths 
that they often only express unfortunately. Inquiry 
with him was always really free. He was the victim 
of no habits of thought. He helped one to criticise 
himself. However strong his opinion, it was always 
a subject for revision under new lights. 

This was not merely true of his theological opin- 
ions. His articles on Xapoleon in the first volume of 
his Works contained a very decided view. But he 
was eager to know if others who had personal relations 
with this remarkable person differed from him ; and 
I have letters of his on the subject addressed to Sis- 
mondi and De Gerando, even after he had printed Ms 
own views, which shows that he was still desirous 
to modify his own view if truth demanded it. He 
deprecated stereotyping his own thought; he would 
rather have it ever growing broader. I told him 
Lieutenant Greene thought that in his article on Na- 
poleon he exalted the men of thought above the men 
of action, when it was the men of action who made 
the men of thought; for great writers and great art- 
ists followed, not preceded, great historical events, — 
wars, political revolutions, etc. 

His attention was immediately arrested, and he in- 
troduced the subject when he next saw Lieutenant 
Greene, who maintained the view of Napoleon which 
Hazlitt's Life of him gives. He said : " Xapoleon, at 
the beginning of his career, embodied and worked out 
the idea of the sovereignty of the people versus what 
is called legitimacy ; and went on conquering until 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



445 



he lost his idea and fell into an emperor. Then the 
legitimists whipped him, and sent him to St. Helena." 
Dr. Channing was pleased with this, and frankly ad- 
mitted that he had treated of him only as he was 
after he " fell into an emperor," and might not have 
estimated what he had done for mankind when he 
was yet truly himself. 

In the year 1841 there was much question about 
the organization of the Christian church or churches ; 
question whether there should be any organization ; 
whether the time had not come for the Church to be 
viewed as a spiritual influence, guarded in its free- 
dom by the Constitution of the country, which in the 
United States assures to every one of legal maturity 
freedom of conscience and the liberty of prophesying. 
Lieutenant Greene, being the grandson of the great 
Baptist saint and preacher Batchelder, — the odor of 
whose sanctity still lingers in the air of New Hamp- 
shire and Maine, — was inclined to the old Pilgrim 
independency. Mr. Bipley was suggesting, by the 
constitution of Brook Farm, the end of the church 
militant and the initiation of the time when " none 
shall say, Know ye the Lord ! for all shall know Him 
from the least unto the greatest." And James Free- 
man Clarke had come back to Boston to propose a 
really catholic church, whose forms of worship should 
combine the Congregational, Methodist, Episcopal, 
and Quaker forms ; whose platform should be simply, 
" Our faith is in Jesus Christ, and our purpose is to 
learn his religion and practise it in social union ; " 
and, discriminating faith from belief, should leave to 
every one the liberty of defining for himself (none 



446 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHAINING. 

gainsaying) faith in Christ; inviting every one to 
the Supper of the Lord who was sincerely willing to 
come, without imposing any condition ; baptizing by 
immersion or sprinkling, according to the desire of 
each; and accepting as church members those who 
like the Quakers repudiated the forms altogether, and 
considered the Supper and baptism purely, spiritual 
exercises. Mr. Clarke also wished to ignore as much 
as possible the distinction of clergy and laity, and to 
give all his people the liberty of prophesying occa- 
sionally in the pulpit, and always at the weekly so- 
cial meeting. Some of these meetings were for the 
discussion of doctrine, — for Mr. Clarke believed in 
worshipping God with the mind as well as heart and 
might. Some meetings were for the laying out and 
organizing the liumane work, to do which is the 
supreme object of the Church ; for he believed, with 
the Pilgrim Independents, that the church did not 
make the Christian, but Christians made the church 
for an instrumentality, because the work of humanity 
can only be done by social union of activity. The 
social union of this " Church of the Disciples " was, 
of course, absolutely to ignore all distinctions of rank ; 
and at least once a month there was to be a meeting 
merely for social recreation, which in the summer 
was to be held at the residence of some of the afflu- 
ent members, — thus giving a day of enjoyment, in 
one of the beautiful suburban villas around Boston, to 
those members of the church whose narrow circum- 
stances kept them all the year round in the hot city. 

It must be obvious to every reader of the forego- 
ing pages how this plan, in every feature of it, must 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 447 

have met Dr. Channing's views. He took great in- 
terest in the planting of this vine, — among whose 
fruits have been the Kansas-Aid Societies, the Chil- 
dren's-Aid Societies, and many others for benevolent 
work and intellectual and aesthetic culture. One other 
feature completed the plan, making it a truly catholic 
church in Dr. Channing's eyes. Mr. Clarke invited 
into his pulpit, in the evening service, preachers of 
all the different sects, so that his people might have 
a free range of doctrinal thought, and not believe in 
their own independent creed in ignorance of others, 
but from intelligent conviction, and have a chance to 
do justice to all others while preferring their own. 
Dr. Channing attended and took part in many of 
the preliminary meetings ; and his two brothers and 
his son, and many of the members of the Federal- 
street Church became members of this broader one 
with his sympathy. 

In forming the " Church of the Disciples " nothing 
was said about money. Mr. Clarke had faith to 
believe that the brethren would remember that the 
laborer was worthy of his hire, and that the matter 
of his salary could be left to a voluntary subscription 
in which every one should give what he could afford, 
and those who could afford nothing were to come 
wholly "without price." His faith has been justified, 
and the church that literally met in a hired " upper 
chamber," the first year, now gathers in one of the 
largest buildings in Boston, and Mr. Clarke is lib- 
erally supported by a voluntary subscription, which 
covers all the expenses of the church besides. 

Thus it may be seen, that, in the last year of his 



448 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANGING. 

life, Dr. Channing was as free from dogmatism and 

as open to new movements as in his youth, and even 

more so. While his heart was ever growing calmer 

and stronger in the central faith of God-wiih-us in 

Christ Jesus, his intellect ranged Nature, wide awake 

to the fact that "the Spirit is making all things 

new " for evermore. In what is called the " advanced 

thought " of to-day I see nothing indisputable which 

he did not anticipate by some suggestion or inquiry. 

If I had been able to gather into this volume all 

I heard him say, it would be seen indeed that he had 

fore glimpses even of the scientific discovery of the 

descent of man's body from star-dust, through all the 

evolutions of vegetable and animal form, and other 
p * ' 

discoveries of science ; and was still asking questions 
which he believed Nature would be able to answer 
in the immortal existence, much of whose spiritual 
experiences the phenomena of matter prophesy. 

As I draw near to the end of my story, I keenly 
feel how inadequate are my desultory sketches to 
portray the character and mind of Dr. Channing. 
There is one characteristic in which, I think, lay the 
secret of his universality, and in which I have never 
seen his equal, except in the instance of the late 
Frederic Denison Maurice, of whom Dr. James Mar- 
tineau has said that he "was the greatest spiritual 
influence on England of the century." This was an 
intellectual humility, a sleepless suspicion of himself, 
of the narrowing and darkening effect of his own in- 
dividuality. Both these saints and prophets of the 
nineteenth century looked with eagle eyes upon the 



REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



449 



sun of truth, because they did not stand within their 
own shadows ; because each of them — 

" In the secret hour of inward thought 
Could still revere and still suspect himself, 
In lowliness of heart." 

Of this trait I must give one more illustration from 
my last interview with Dr. Channing. It was in the 
spring of 1842, when he was just about to start upon 
his last summer journey, that I went to bid him 
good-by. I found him in the midst of his packing, 
with which he still went on while I sat talking with 
him. At last I rose to go, when he left his work, 
and coming up to me kindly took both my hands in 
his and said : " Well, will you write to me this sum- 
mer, and make me partner of your new thoughts ? " 

" I do not know, Sir," I replied. " I have hardly 
learned how to clothe them with words." 

He smiled benignantly, and said : " But if you 
learn anything from this young friend of yours, or 
from any other source, don't you think / have the 
first right to it ? " 

And these words, and a kind good-by, were the last 
I heard from the " golden lips." 

I did not write to him that summer, and only in- 
directly heard from him until early in October, when 
a letter from Frederic Eustis told me that he had just 
departed, peacefully gazing on a beautiful sunset sky. 
While my eyes were yet full of the tears that the let- 
ter called forth, Washington Allston entered my 
shop, — the only visit I ever had from him. I told 
him of the event. He stepped backward and sat 
down, overpowered by the shock. " Ah ! is it so ? 

29 



450 REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING. 



said he. " Dr. Channing was a good man ! an excel- 
lent man ! We did not think alike about every- 
thing, but we never spoke of that. I loved him! " 

He could not remember the errand on which he 
came, and soon went away. He did not, as I heard, 
soon recover from this shock, nor long survive it. I 
saw him only once again, when he showed me the 
design he had made for Dr. Channing's monument at 
Mt. Auburn. And again he repeated more than 
once : — 

"Dr. Channing was an excellent man! I loved 
him ! " 



APPENDIX. 



(Extracts from i2. G. Hazard's letter mentioned on p. 351.) 

Peacedale, R. I., Jan. 1, 1880. 

My dear Miss Peabody, — Among the pleasant occur- 
rences of the two or three days I spent the past summer in 
attending the lectures at Concord, I have not forgotten the 
inquiries you made of me as to my first acquaintance with 
Dr. Channing, and cheerfully respond to the expression of 
your kind interest to know more about it. It is a long 
time since, but as an event of much interest to me at the 
time, as well as one that much influenced my subsequent 
thought and effort, it is still fresh in my memory. . . . 

His visit to me must have been in the fall of 1835. I 
recollect that the late Eev. Thomas Vernon of Newport, with 
his family, was spending the day at my house, and intro- 
duced the Doctor to us on his arrival. He soon explained 
the occasion of his visit. The first edition of my essay 
entitled " Language " had been published anonymously in 
Providence a few months before. He, of course, could not 
fail to notice the defects, which indicated the absence of 
experience in the writer ; but some of the thoughts inter- 
ested him, and he had written to the publisher to ask who 
wrote it, and at once came to see me. . . . 

I had a number of, to me, very interesting interviews 
with him thereafter, sometimes at Newport and sometimes 



452 



APPENDIX. 



in Boston ; but my life, was a very busy one, and I was at 
the South nearly half of each year, and it has ever since 
been a matter of regret, I may say of self-reproach, that I 
did not avail myself of his cordial invitations and see more 
of him. It was a pleasure I had in prospect, which his 
death put an end to my hope of realizing. 

But you wished me to give you some of our conversa- 
tions. I find my memory suffices to enter into these in 
detail. Among the subjects I recollect were Eev elation 
and Inspiration, which were probably suggested by the 
views I had expressed upon them in "Language;" and 
with these came up the subject of the " inner light " of 
the Quakers, and their faith in immediate revelation and 
inspiration. But my recollections are naturally more dis- 
tinct as to those subjects, which, at his request, I subse- 
quently investigated. 

We were speaking of the influence of habit, upon which 
I remarked that its relation to action seemed to me to be 
analogous to that of memory to knowledge, — memory 
retaining what we have already learned in the past, and 
enabling us to use it for future acquisition, or other pur- 
pose, without relearning it for each occasion ; and habit 
enabling us to repeat our actions on like occasions, without 
the necessity of devising the plan of action at each recur- 
rence of them. Dr. Channing acquiesced in that view, 
and remarked upon it that he had always before looked 
upon habit as an enslaving vice of the mind. His quick- 
ness in recognizing any idea which was new to him, and 
the readiness with which he gave one credit for it, was 
among the pleasant traits of his conversation, — one, how- 
ever, which, in those fields of thought in which he most 
delighted, he would seldom have occasion to manifest ;• 
for in these, as his friend Dr. Dewey has well said, he 
seemed to u have a thought beyond other men's thought." 



APPENDIX. 



453 



Once, and I believe only once during that visit, the sub- 
ject usually spoken of as " the freedom of the will " came 
up. Dr. Channing stated his own position in regard to it 
to be, that, while upon the testimony of his own conscious- 
ness he fully believed in freedom, — that is, in his own 
free agency, — still, all the argument seemed to him to be 
in favor of necessity ; and he went on to state what he 
regarded as the strongest argument of the advocates for 
necessity,; namely, that if the same circumstances should 
occur a thousand times over, and the conditions of the 
mind at each recurrence of them should be the same, then 
the action would be the same. And this, he said, seemed 
to him to argue necessity. I replied, at the moment, that 
this was a particular case of the general law that the same 
causes necessarily produce the same effects ; and I doubted 
the applicability of this law to mind, which was itself a 
cause. Here, so far as I recollect, the discussion of that 
subject then ended. 

I met him again not very long after, at his summer resi- 
dence near Newport, when he recurred to this conversation 
and the remark I had then made touching the like cases ; 
and I then said to him : " Admit, for the purpose of the 
argument, that the same causes do of necessity produce 
the same effects, and that this law does apply to mind. 
Now suppose the one thousand cases with all the circum- 
stances the same, and the conditions of the mind at each 
recurrence of them also the same, and that one of those 
conditions is that of necessity; then the same causes of 
necessity producing the same effects, the same action follows. 
Again, suppose another one thousand cases all alike, and 
that the conditions of the mind at each recurrence of them 
are again also alike, but that one of these conditions in- 
stead of that of necessity is now that of freedom ; then the 
same causes of necessity producing the same effects, the same 



454 



APPENDIX. 



action follows* Now, as we can change the element of ne- 
cessity to that of freedom without changing the result, the 
result is no indication of which is in and which is out." 

Dr. Channing, after a short pause, said : "It looks as if 
you had thrown that argument entirely out of the ques- 
tion ; but I would not like to decide it upon so short con- 
sideration." 

In one of my earliest discussions with J ohn Stuart Mill, 
I narrated what I have just written ; and when I had 
stated Dr. Channing's view as the strongest argument of 
the necessarians, Mill interrupted me to say, " That is 
precisely what I rely upon." When I repeated what I 
had said upon it, I thought he looked perplexed ; and 
thinking I had not expressed myself clearly I began to ex- 
plain, but he held up his finger and said: "I see the 
point i I see it. Eut I will wait till I read that in your 
book." I was struck with- the similarity of the effect upon 
these two distinguished thinkers. 

I cannot now fix the date, but at one time when I was 
about to leave for the winter, Dr. Channing wrote to me 
that he wished to see me before I left, but was not well 
enough to leave home. I, of course, went to see him; 
when he said to me in substance that he had recently re- 
read " Language," with a higher appreciation of it than 
before ; that he very much desired that the argument of 
Edwards should be logically refuted, and that freedom 
should be logically established, and he wished that I 
would undertake it. I was quite surprised, and expressed 
the doubt I felt as to my ability, and also mentioned the 
slight knowledge I had of the subject, — not having even 
read the argument of Edwards \ or given special thought 
to the question generally. But he replied that he thought 
I had advanced farther in it than any other one he knew. 
Thus encouraged, and at the same time very loath to refuse 



APPENDIX. 



455 



the request of one I so much revered, I consented to look 
farther into the subject and see what I could do. 

My progress in it was slow ; perhaps the slower, because 
I soon concluded that all the advocates of freedom had 
virtually given up the philosophical argument and fallen 
back either on revelation or their own consciousness, — 

- which weighed nothing with those who questioned the su- 
preme authority of the Bible, or asserted their conscious- 
ness was not that they acted freely, but the reverse. 
Hence I resolved not to read, lest I should get into these 
ruts of thought, which evidently did not lead to the point 
I wished to reach, but would first try to work out the 
problem in my own way. From Edwards I learned what 
the questions were, and began to think about them in my 
usual desultory way as I was travelling about, or in such 
leisure moments as I could spare from my regular business, 
and became more and more interested in the pursuit. 

You will perhaps be misled by what I have just said, if 
I do not add, that, some years before this, Mrs. Sarah 
Helen Whitman had called my attention to this question. 
With her fine poetic genius she combined much metaphy- 
sical acuteness ; the clear, far-reaching vision of the poet 

* told even in the narrow field of logical demonstration, and 
it was a pleasure to discuss almost any question with her. 
She was then a necessarian, but subsequently changed her 
views. 

As I have just said, my progress was slow ; but after 
some years (I cannot at the moment say how many), I 
thought I was prepared on all the main points involved, 
and only needed time to arrange and rewrite the notes I 
had made, and hoped to do this when I got back to Peace- 
dale, — being then in New Orleans. In the meantime I 
made a trip to Mobile, and, in returning, the steamer got 
aground, and the passengers were transferred to another 



456 



APPENDIX. 



steamer, leaving their baggage. I never recovered my 
trunk, which contained all my notes " On the Will." I 
made much effort, and accidentally ascertained that it had 
been stolen by the conductor of the short road from New 
Orleans to Lake Ponchartrain, who had run away. I 
found a man who knew about it, and offered him a liberal 
reward for the papers alone, but eventually concluded they 
had- been burned, and abandoned the effort to recover 
them. Subsequently I thought I had made the work bet- 
ter in the rewriting than I should have done from my 
original notes; at the same time, however, I felt the loss 
of what had cost me so much labor. My business was re- 
quiring more attention. Dr. Channing was no longer here 
to inspire my efforts, and it was a long time before I felt 
ready to renew them. I think, indeed, it was not till 
after the business revulsion of 1857. In 1861 I was 
ready to publish ; but then the Civil War began, and the 
question of the freedom of the will had small chance of 
attention when thought of the freedom of the slam was so 
urgently pressed upon us ; and it was not till 1864 that 
the Appletons deemed it advisable to put the work in 
press. " Thou knowest the rest." 

But I see that I am already imposing much more upon • 
you than is warranted by your request, having to the ac- 
count of my interviews with Dr. Channing added some of 
the consequences of it. I beg you to excuse my doing 
this, as also the very hasty manner in which I have writ- 
ten. .1 would most cheerfully have devoted more time to 
your request, but I am exceedingly pressed with some very 
important matters, from which I see no prospect of imme- 
diate relief, and so concluded to write you at once. 
Your sincere friend, 

E. G. Hazard. 



INDEX 



OF THE 

NAMES OF PRINCIPAL LIVING PERSONS MENTIONED 
IN THE TEXT. 



Abbot, J. E., 19, 20, 37, 39. 

Alcott, A. B., 350, 355, 357, 391, 414, 431. 

Allston, Washington, 25, 75, 76, 331-33, 342, 346, 412, 449, 450. 

Barrett, B. F., Preface, and 185. 

Brownson, 0. A., 350, 352-54, 395, 405, 414-16, 418. 

Buckminster, Jos., 67, 95, 103, 143, 156. 

Cabot, E. L., 118, 204, 205, 207, 213, 214, 235, 301, 304. 
Cabot, S., 205, 235, 244. 
Channing, Mrs. F., 38, 119. 

Channing, Mrs. W. E., 65, 75, 82-84, 87, 129, 319, 325, 344, 345, 

356, 397, 400, 410. 
Clarke, Dr. J. F., 350, 391, 436, 445-47. 

Coleridge, S. T., 70, 72, 75-77, 142, 143, 279, 355, 364, 441. 

Emerson, R. W., 273, 350, 364-67, 371-74, 377-81, 393, 402, 407, 
435, 436. 

Follen, Dr. Charles, 189, 213-17, 223, 224, 227, 228, 250, 251, 
257-59, 263, 264, 266, 281, 282, 301, 322, 339, 353, 359, 369, 
386, 405. 

Froebel, Frederick, 13, 93, 94, 147, 159, 257, 356, 367, 391. 



458 



INDEX. 



Fuller, Margaret, 370, 402-05, 415. 
Furness, Dr. A\ r m., 371, 372. 

Gannett, Dr. E. S., 43, 50, 224, 231, 244. 

Gannett, W. C, 66. 

Gardiner, R. H., 49, 50, 63, 67. 

Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 357, 358, 363. 

Gibbs, Miss S., 260, 325, 326, 332, 333, 344. 

Gibbs, Mr., 329, 361. 

Graeter, Francis, 339, 346-48. 

Greene, Lieutenant, 364, 435-42, 444, 455. 

Guild, Mr. k Mrs., 92, 95, 101, 114, 213. 

Hazard, R. G., 350, 351, and the Appendix. 
Hedge, Dr. F. H., 371, 394. 

Kirklaxd, J. T., 40, 155, 156, 290, 323. 

Lowell, Miss X., 86, 93, 95. 103. 

Manx, Horace, 350, 3S3-S6, 423. 
Martineau, Miss H., 361, 395, 396, 398, 399. 
Martineau, Dr. James, 368, 448. 

Newhall, Mary, 307, 308, 310-12. 

Norton, Andrews, 21, 36, 74, 237, 368, 369, 371, 372, 374, 405. 

Parker, Theodore, 350, 405, 414, 417, 420, 422, 423, 425-27, 429, 
435, 436. 

Phillips, Jonathan, 41, 246-56, 264, 266-69, 299, 368, 392. 
Phillips, Rebecca, 289. 

Ripley, George, 350, 353, 368-71, 405-07, 413, 414, 417-19, 445. 
Russell, William, 226-29, 250, 289, 355. 

Sullivan, Mr. & Mrs. Richard, 92, 95, 99, 104, 106, 113, 114, 153, 
213, 21S, 242, 287-89, 296-98, 386. 

Taylor. Father. $70-78. 

Ti'tknor. Gporee, 205. 231, 233. 237. 

Tuckennai], Dr., 268-71, 336. 



INDEX. 



459 



Walker, Dr. J., 47, 59, 60, 68, 281, 416. 

Ware, Dr. H., 21, 39, 74. 

Ware, Henry, Jr., 41, 372, 374, 378, 379. 

Wordsworth, Wm., 72, 77, 80, 81, 93, 127, 134, 158, 185, 188, 
190, 287, 337, 339. 

Note. — The above list does not contain the names of authors 
to whom reference is made in the text, nor of all persons who are 
there mentioned. 



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